KLM Flying Dutchman - Its all gone crazy at KLM

I booked five flights last week, no tickets arrived yet or anything on the on-line FD account to show booking bonus.

Called FD helpdesk today about missing points from flights end of March " can I suggest you call back on Monday " This translates to Its nearly lunch time and I cannot be @#!%&*d with your request.

I have booked again for another trip to Taiwan in a few weeks (yeh yeh I know hold your breath and wear a head condom )I wanted to know on seat availablity to upgrade to WBC using points
" I would reccomend you call next week as we will have a better idea of what is available and I am sure the points will be posted on your account by then " This translated to please get off the line as my soup is getting cold."

"Can you tell me why it costs £800 to fly from Newcastle but only £370 from Manchester."

You really need to talk to KLM sales in the UK about these matters as we are only the helpdesk" ?????????????

Translated :- " Get of the line you @#!%&*, my soup has gone cold and my so called mate is eating my choclate moose"

So I caled KLM UK sales.I got the delightful Evee ?? not sure how to spell that.

Asked again about the on line bookings.
" I dont know anything about those but we have an internet help line " ???????

"How about the price difference on my flight to Taiwan "

"Cant help you on that one either sir, you have got it cheaper (£800.00)than I can sell it to you at"

"Thats funny because I booked it on line with your website"

I called AMEX travel to ask them why there was such a price difference. The cheapest fare she had was close on £900.00

What I would like to know is how can they offer fares of £370.00 from London, Manchester,Birmingham and London City. Why not from all the UK airports they fly from. Its no problem for me to fly from Manchester as I have business just down the road from there, but the difference in price is enormous and I would have thought the object of the exercise would be to fill the planes between AMS and the Far East, so get people into AMS and fill up the planes.

Anyway I called my credit card company explained the difference in price and they have charged back the transaction after I told them I just have had a memo from my boss (the wife ) explaining Taipei is a no go area due to SARS.

I will try again tomorrow to find out the best price to pay and book it. It shows as a Q fare which means if you want to make any changes it costs £75.00 which I think is more than fair.

What I need to know is the website address I can go to see availability on seats for dates between June 15 and June 29. I was thinking that if economy is as empty as it was a few weeks ago, then I will gladly fly Y class knowing there are going to be lots of room to stretch out and sleep.


As the wise man used to say on the telly "Dont you just love em"

No prizes for who used to say this but a clue was he had an Ozzy accent and was famous for painting and blow jobs. If you remember this yoou are getting too old like me.


I dont care about food and entertainment in C, I only fly C long haul so I can sleep and get off knowing I can go straight to work.

Well...

I work as a part-time floor manager of a 'customer care centre' (don't call it call centre, because that's a swear word in the industry) and I can tell you from first-hand experience: the quality of call agents varies from doormat IQ drone to intelligent pro-active troubleshooter. However, there are literally 10 doormats for every troubleshooter.

And as far as pricing policy is concerned, KLM is inconsistent. For instance, a ticket ams-huy can be up to about 4 times as expensive as a ticket huy-ams.

Couldn't agree more Steve. Saw an action fare on UK website, £288+tax to SAN over Oct half term, (wife is a teacher). Trip would ensure we qualify as G/E this year particularly as one option offered was MME - AMS - SEA - SAN and return. Offer closed today 15th May. We decided to go for it. Got to website at 6.30pm to find "SORRY THERE ARE NO POSSIBILITIES TO TRAVEL BETWEEN THE SELECTED CITIES IN THIS PRICE RANGE" I tried most of the advertised destinations using several UK departure cities and found it was impossible to book any of them. Basically the offer had been pulled early!

I too phoned London Reservations to be told that the internet offers did not appear on their system but that she could book the same trip for £1556. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/tongue.gif I was directed to the internet help desk who said they would investigate and ring me back. He rang back to say he would try and sort it with London. He couldn't. He told me he would ring his own helpline and then rang back at 10.15pm and told me they were totally unable to explain the "Error" message and couldn't sort it out.

I explained politely that as the offer ended on May 15th I also suggested they might like to honour the reservation request even though the site was showing an error message it was still within the offer time-frame. He went off to try to sort this one out then shortly afterwards rang back to say that "all offers on the site were conditional and could not be guaranteed and therefore I could not insist on KLM honouring the advertised offer. (Although he did agree that any offer would normally end at midnight on the day in question).I suggested that perhaps they had been a bit quick off the mark at taking the offers off line and that it wasn't actually an error message per se but a "mistake". He agreed.

This was then born out by the fact that on the KLM site for the Netherlands all the action fares for up to the 15th had vanished and had been replaced by an offer AMS - SAN from 16th May valid for about 6 weeks.

It is now 11.10pm and the error message is stil on, unlike my week in SAN!! I am now looking to stuff the screen shots I had printed out as evidence of this debacle, into a suitable orifice...suggestions welcomed http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mad.gif

Exraf ..now looking like ex G/E

Re. last.
It's now 11.30 pm and UK website has a message reading "Because of technical difficulties we are unable to accept on-line bookings at the moment" (which loosely translated means we are now changing our offers!!)

Glad I was able to be of assistance in pointing out the error http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

Exraf

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">
Its all gone crazy at KLM.
</font>

this assumes it was once sane.

I have just had a go at booking to the USA and that section is out of action due to technical problems.

By the way, anyone give me the web address to check out seat availability between June 20-29 AMS - TPE

OK Steve, deal done.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/edelman/travel/galileo/frame.html

Is what I use mose of the time.

pmcg

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Steve Fenton:
By the way, anyone give me the web address to check out seat availability between June 20-29 AMS - TPE</font>

1.) Checking availability & Seat maps (http://www.seatmap.com)
2.) Checking reservations online (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum28/HTML/001062.html)

Thanks everyone for seat availability info, will use when I get 5 mins to book my flight.

Just about to call FD in AMS to see what flob off excuse I get today for missing points

Steve, got 3 phone calls this morning from FD!!

Whilst they had a hard time (or so they said) understanding why I was peeved that they gave me 5500 "miles" for flights taken before the switch date that were credited after the changeover instead of the 5500 "points" x 1.83 = 10065 miles they did call and tried to get it sorted.

Also said that the on-line booking bonus is a known problem and it looks like this needs to be done manually via FD as the system just does not work.

pmcg

I called FD regarding the missing points on my account and got the lovely Anna.
"I am calling about the email you have sent me regaring missing points"

"Yes sir you need to fax them to us"

I have done that twice now and you emailed me today asking me to call you about it, so I am calling you.

" What is your account number" ( looks like I might have to do some work here )

"Oh yes, I think the points are on your latest statement which went out to you a few days ago"

" Can you see the milegae credited on the account"

"No sir but if you want to call us back next wednesday I am sure it will all be sorted by then" ( Ibet thats her day off )

"If you think the points are on my next statement but cant see them in the system then surely they are not allocated"

" You are right but it is too late in the day now to allocate anymore points so it is better if you call next Wednesday" ( I dont want to have to start something now as its nearly the weekend )

"So why have you emailed me asking me to call you about it"

" I am not sure sir"

"Do you want me to fax the boarding cards to you now so you can deal with this for me"

"Where were you flying" ( Damm he got me there)

"AMS &gt; Taipei &gt; AMS in C class and you only credited me Y class"

"Did you fly with Malaysian"

"No KLM"

"I dont think we have a codeshare on Taipei"

"You are right you dont as it is a KLM aircraft that flys there and back"

"Are the boarding cards from KLM"

"Yes outbound showing C class and my elite #"

"what about in bound"

"They are EVA Air boarding cards showing KL flight number, C Class and my elite number"

"Ah we dont have a code share with EVA thats what must be the problem"

"Yes I know you dont have a code share with EVA, they are your handling agent in Taipei as you closed your office there and now use them in Terminal 2 instead of your own office in terminal 1" ( Sugar- this guy seems to know our system)

"So you flew out with KLM and back with EVA"

"No on both flights I got on a big plane with a hump on the roof and it was blue and white with great big letters on it saying KLM, is this one of yours"

"Yes sir - I am sure if you call back on Wednesday it can be sorted out" (is something happening next wednesday that I dont know about )

"So why did you email me asking me to call you about sorting the matter out"

"I dont know sir, is there anything else I can help you with"

"As a matter of fact there is" ( No way you are going home early )

"I want to reserve my seat on my flight on May 30 from AMS &gt; Milan"

I give her all the details.

" It is not possible to reserve seats on this flight with the class of ticket you have bought"

"But I am elite and it is one of the benefits"

"Yes but KLM has the right to change these benefits at anytime"

"So why am I being pushed to order on line so you dont have to pay any commission to agents. This then allows us passengers the fun of claiming the 500 miles per booking on line bonus, which is supposed to be allocated automatically"

"I dont know the answer sir"

At this stage I was convinced the glorious day of next wednesday was going to be offered to solve all my problems.

"So you are saying that although I have elite status - you are now taking away this useful benefit as your system has sold me a ticket that is a class outside the membership benefits and it does not even offer you the choice of class anyway"

"Yes sir you are right"

"Correct me if I am wrong but is business not as good as it was six months ago"

"Yes sir you are right"

"Would it not make sense to keep your FF customers happy in view of the drop in business"

"Yes sir I agree"

"So we no have a new enhanced intra European service that is basically a no frills service and if you evail yourself to fly with KLM at much higher prices than the no frills airlines there is now no benefits"

"You are right sir"

"So why are you taking away what little benefits I have without even notifying me, when I have been extremely loyal to KLM over the last six months, in fact you have been bombarded me recently telling how much better everything just got"

"I dont make the rules sir, but you are right"

"I think you should call the UK sales office and see what they can do" (Must be past her hometime at this stage )

I call the UK office and get a very helpful Jamie.

He quickly confirms that there are no elite benefits when booking on-line and it will not give the choice to pay a higher class for service, especially if it is a special offer. It appears this can only be done by a travel agent.However, the is a problem as the conditions do not state anywhere that your FD benefits will be affected.I assumes you dont have a FD account.

He does however make sure there is a note sent to HO and the check in desk to explain I need to be seated as close as possible to the front as I have TV interview 35 minutes after we land and need to off the plane el pronto.

What else have we not been informed about that KLM has decided to offer as an enhancement to the intra european experience.



[This message has been edited by Steve Fenton (edited 05-16-2003).]

Hi Steve,

can I assume that you bought one of the new intraeuropean tickets and that they do not assign you a seat on those cheaper fare classes in advance ??

If so, do you have an idea on which classes they will preassign a seat and on which fareclasses it is impossible ?

Threy

It was made very clear you can get any pre-assigned seatsbuy such a ticket and that FD rules have been amended accordingly.

Basically you buy a ticket on special offer and you only transport from A to B with no benefits.

How long before they say no miles as well.

I think this is a good point to raise with them as they are in serious danger of me removing my loyalty in full.