bmi diamond club - A new ICC record!

I think I have set a new one day record for spending time on hold calling the ICC today.

I have managed a grand total of 3 hours and 47 minutes on hold waiting for someone, anyone to pick up the flipping phone. Each call has timed out after an hour, so it was a case of trying again.

The phone was answered once during the day (after about 35 minutes) and I was immediately cut off when the operative realised there was someone on the line. Besides that, it was just a case of lots of hearing the same stock messages on a loop.

I tried the gold line 0845, the UK version of the gold line and the standard DC number as well. No joy with any of them.

Oh and to add insult to injury, one of the flights I was trying to book has disappeared on ANA now, so we've probably missed out on the trip anyway. :rolleyes:

I'll try again when I have a spare half a day to go through the same fun. :mad:

I feel your pain.

I just hung up after 42 minutes having been on hold for 10 and 12 mins respectively prior to that. I didn't even get cut off at 18:00 so I carried on holding out of curiosity in case it did answer. But then I got bored.

I've called 4 other times today and got through relatively painlessly (sorry). That said, I still failed to confirm and pay for an amendment as the taxes are still not loaded: "Call again in 2 hours", "Call again in 1 hour", "sorry still not loaded, call again in 1 hour" "really sorry, I will prioritise call again in 15 mins" yada yada yada. What's more annoying is that the taxes will be exactly the same :rolleyes:

Provided my unticketed sector doesn't get cancelled I'm not so bothered. But if it does.............

Had smililarly bad experience today... on hold for about 30 mins before being answered at 5:50pm. Then agent (whos name i wrote down) asked me to hold while she checked availability, and hung up at 6pm without coming back to me.

I intend to send in a complaint tomorrow. Where is best to send it?

Had smililarly bad experience today... on hold for about 30 mins before being answered at 5:50pm. Then agent (whos name i wrote down) asked me to hold while she checked availability, and hung up at 6pm without coming back to me.

I intend to send in a complaint tomorrow. Where is best to send it?

Customer relations via http://www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/contact-us/customer-relations.aspx

I wonder how many rupees were in the pot today, and which agent scooped the prize.

I made a called around 15:30 today, took me 1 minute on hold, then 25 minutes booking a return trip. I was, for once, very impressed with the service.

I called the UK gold number (01332...).

Buried somewhere in the sticky, there is advice about not staying on hold for more than 15 minutes - this advice was given to us by a call centre manager. Reason is that you can get lost in the hold orbit - and call centre's purpose is to answer the calls as fast as possible as cheaply as possible.* You are normally more likely to get a faster response by hanging up and calling again than by hanging on.


*unless you are NTL, in which case you don't ever answer the phone, so the cost is actually NIL

I called this morning and had to wait 30mind for call to be answered only to be told the seats were available but they "had not been released"! After some advise on the board I called back waited 45mins to be told "the date and time of the flight I was asking about did not exist on their system", it cleary did on ANA. Asked to call back after 1 hour as this might be a system error.

Called back and got a more knowlegable lassy who promtly booked me on the flights I was looking for (even when ANA showed only 1 seat available I managed to get both Lufty business class seats). She couldn't load up taxes asked to call back after an hour when they will be able to get the taxes for me. Called 3 times, each time got disconnected after 1 hour!

Will try and call first thing tomorrow to pay..hopefully taxes will have loaded up!

Todays lines were very busy. Luckily I had read the sticky a few times due to having experiences like this before and now I have a 5minute rule. Anything not answered after 5mins is unlikely to be answered at all IME.
Today I rang up the ICC a few times and for each I put my rule into action and found that after a maximum of 3 5minute calls ''on hold'' I would be put straight through. ^

Either they were short-staffed, IT issues or just a bunch of people are clued up on the C+M aspect of diamond club and the Lufthansa takeover and perhaps tried to get tickets in. I also guess it is natural to assume that people are booking their holidays for the summer on a Sunday and perhaps people are deciding to use miles.

Must say I have always been impressed with the holding time. On all of my calls it has been less than a couple of minutes. ^

I always call during the week and never at weekends, usually around 4-6pm UK time is best.

Have to agree - I've booked 6 redemptions in the last month, all booked during the day from work (mid-morning, mid-afternoon) and always got through immediately.

Indeed - I normally try to call during the week, but as I'm out of the office for much of this week, I was hoping to get stuff sorted today.

As for the 15 minute holding rule, that's useful to know for my next round of attempts.

You are normally more likely to get a faster response by hanging up and calling again than by hanging on.

This is very surprising and, if true, speaks to the cruddy quality of the call center system they are using. If calls are not being correctly processed out of the hold queue then something is very, very, very wrong.

If calls are not being correctly processed out of the hold queue then something is very, very, very wrong.

Do you reckon? :rolleyes:

:p