So, I booked an award ticket to MSY for the end of the month about 2 weeks ago. Used the 40k premium coach award. Upgraded it. Did all of this online (yes, Virginia, it will let you upgrade the premium coach award at the time of booking--or so it seems).
Tonight, since I'm bored (here in GLA), I plug the PNR into Virtually There, and take a look. Hmm, does not look like it ticketed yet. Did not get the e-mail that one normally gets to indicate that ticketing took place. Can't get Virtually There to spit out an e-ticket receipt. Uh-oh.
Call the CP desk, who confirms that it did not ticket. The agent calls usairways.com, who tells her that they have done all they can do, and it is the hands of the DM folks. Well, the CP agent can see that miles were never deducted, so she tries to "run it again."
In the end, she had to re-ticket the whole thing under a new PNR. The kicker is this: 1 hour later, Virtually There still looks like the thing did not ticket, and the miles have still not come out of my account.
The saga continues. I would book award tickets online at your peril..... (or at least try to upgrade them that way at your peril.....)
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Saving the world, one clue at a time.
SonOfACockroach
Jan 20, 03, 5:43 pm
When was the last time we didn't have to use that **** website at our peril?
ClueByFour
Jan 20, 03, 8:44 pm
It finally ticketed. I would have been a bit peeved to get to the airport and had this particular trip fall apart, especially considering that I'm on the last direct flight from PIT-MSY on the day in question, and had fully inteneded to roll into the airport on very short notice.
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Saving the world, one clue at a time.
Arrzee
Jan 20, 03, 9:01 pm
Clue,
This happened to me when I first used the online award redemption thing. After not getting a ticket receipt email, and Virtually There not showing the eTicket receipt either, I emailed us.com to see what was up. Turns out that the .com folks "make" the reservation but General Res actually issues the ticket and deducts the miles. As such, Virtually There won't show the e-ticket receipt under the .com PNR, even though the tix has been issued. A few days later I got the receipt via snail mail (just like any other TBM does). Weird, indeed. But it does work.
pdhenry
Jan 20, 03, 9:56 pm
It took 3 or 4 weeks for my online award res to ticket - by that time the departure times to and from LGW had changed 2 or 3 times, completely shuffling me into different connecting cities (PHL to PIT and/or vice versa) and off main metal onto commuters to and from my originating city. I finally got an email saying that since my itinerary had changed I'd have to call the 800 number and speak to a human to confirm that I still wanted it. So much for online award redemption. I called and gave my OK and the ticket receipt arrived within a week. Then they changed the flight timing again...
ClueByFour
Jan 21, 03, 9:55 am
My original itinerary never did ticket, despite the best efforts of the CP desk. It's not like it was a couple of days or the like. It never happened.
From what I could tell, the process is supposed to work thusly:
1. usairways.com makes the reservation.
2. DM deducts miles and issues a "cert" number or somesuch.
3. Reservations tickets the reservation.
2 and 3 never happened. I should have also mentioned that miles were never deducted from my account, and that was another "clue to call."
This morning (well, this morning East Coast time, anyway), I received a call from the CP desk. They think the original reservation was hosed because I upgraded it online before it ticketed, and the reservation system and/or the DM folks had no idea what to do with it.
Two lessons here:
1. Let the thing ticket before you try to upgrade it (a 40k premium award, in this case). or
2. Just call your preferred desk of choice and let the human do it. I've found the rate of error to be far less this way http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif.
(3). Optional. US needs to hire another "programmer" and/or a nice business analyst to fix their whacko IT process.
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Saving the world, one clue at a time.
markbach
Feb 8, 03, 11:35 am
Heh, the same thing happened to me.
Wednesday, 1:30am: book premium coach ticket online.
Wednesday, 10:00am: call and make sure I am ticketed, and then upgrade 3/4 segments. Upgrade not available on one segment even though there are 9 "I" seats. Huh?
Wednesday, 10:04am: call back, all segments upgraded, seats assigned, life is good.
Thursday, 9:00pm: notice that itinerary on US website says "on hold", VirtuallyThere shows 2 entries for each segment (Economy-Cancelled, and First-Confirmed), and no miles have been deducted. Call US, find out that I have not been ticketed, because I was upgraded before I ticketed. Ask agent to to ticket me on the spot, but she is unable, so she says she will ticket me later that night and then upgrade me.
Friday, 10:00pm: miles have been deducted, but VT and US.com still showing "cancelled" and "on hold" respectively. Call US again, they say I am not ticketed, but then find a comment in the PNR with my new, correct, ticketed, and upgraded PNR. Get new PNR, change seats to my preferred non-bulkhead aisles.
So the moral remains, do NOT upgrade award tickets until you are 110% sure that they have ticketed.
TomBascom
Feb 8, 03, 12:04 pm
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by markbach:
Heh, the same thing happened to me.
...
So the moral remains, do NOT upgrade award tickets until you are 110% sure that they have ticketed.</font>
I thought I had booked a premium coach award via the web just before I left for AUA. When I got back a week later there was still no e-mail confirming it and the miles hadn't been deducted. But there was an entry under "current reservations". I went into that and refreshed it (there's an option that says something like that...) and requested upgrades. After I submitted that usairways.com appeared to crash...
The next day everything was in order (and the miles were deducted) but I called to do the upgrades.
And I made the next award reservation over the phone...
ClueByFour
Feb 8, 03, 4:46 pm
Amen to that.
I'm not queueing up upgrades online, either. I don't trust it based on my experience with award tickets, and I have to call anyway to get an exit row in coach, so why not have them queue me up right there.....
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Saving the world, one clue at a time.
TomBascom
Feb 9, 03, 9:03 am
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ClueByFour:
Amen to that.
I'm not queueing up upgrades online, either. I don't trust it based on my experience with award tickets, and I have to call anyway to get an exit row in coach, so why not have them queue me up right there.....
</font>
The online upgrades have been working well for me (knock on wood...) although the promised e-mails seem to be sporadic at best.
jkzahn
Feb 10, 03, 7:00 am
I have to give a second to the warning in this thread. I booked an award for Thanksgiving (yep, gotta plan ahead) on-line and received a confirmation. After receiving nothing for 2 days, I called just to be safe, and they told me that the reservation wasn't really confirmed and was "stuck." So, I had the rep push it through and got a new confirmation number. Well, after 2 more days, and no deductions from my DM account, I called again to find out the new one was "stuck" as well.
So, they did it AGAIN, and third time was a charm.
Bottom line: keep on top of those reservations because they have some MAJOR problems.
LGA
Feb 11, 03, 9:43 am
Y'all can actually make some kind - ANY kind - of reservation online? I get an "usairways.com is unable to process your request at the moment" screen after the "Please Enter Trip Details" screen - same thing today as Friday, when I had called their Help(less) desk and was told there must be a problem on my end. I pointed out that I can go anywhere else on the internet and do anything I need and the error screen is a usairways.com-created screen, and still no help... Oh, and he told me he could not set up the reservation for me (therefore, no 20,000-mile award...).