deissi

Meh, the CS agents are hit and miss. AY.com could not price HEL-BKK-SGN-BKK-HEL in J (I class) whereas availability was there on ITA and Expedia.fi. AY.com wanted to do HEL-BKK-SGN-HKG-HEL which booked as a full J class ticket.

AY CS first told me that they could not sell the ticket at all because BKK-SGN-BKK was on VN. When I contested this interpretation, I was put on hold for 10 minutes. She then came back and said that it is possible indeed, but only on the outward segment. She promptly calculated the price for the same J class tickets that I saw on AY.com. I asked her to price the return journey manually through BKK using the flight numbers, but to no avail.

I ended up booking on Expedia, and the tickets were issued immediately without any problems whatsoever.

ffay005

The problem with Expedia is, if something goes wrong, AY will want Expedia to rebook/reroute/reimburse. And to have Expedia reimburse needs a call to their CS, which always seems to have a 45 min wait to a foreing number in the US

WilcoRoger

I do all my calls to the US on skype - the waiting times may be the same, but costs are 0. And if you can call during the US office hours, you're likely to speak with some competent agent and not Rajiv from Bangalore - I just had a very good chat with Hilton (Diamond) CS.

intuition

Expedia do get some bashing here - probably well deserved - but I personally haven't had any issues. In fact, I was surprised when I had to make a change in a reservation on a flexible SK ticket booked on expedia.se. I called (their "silver line") and was answered in 10 seconds and flight was rebooked in a minute with no fees.

deissi

Yep, exactly why I wanted to avoid using them. I was even willing to pay the phone booking fee to AY, but no.

Nikke

Yesterday at HEL priority check-in desk there was very uninterested looking lady.. i went to her and asked she to cancel my check-in and get to my bag... She just said to me that this is their business check-in so that i have to go to the other side...

Hmm, how on earth she thinks that i don't have business/economy pro ticket or needed status...

I replied that i have the gold card (and even the ticket was pro actually) and she was "oh" and took my passport to start what i asked...

It was really weird and rude in my opinion...

Furry

Checking in for AY flight upgraded to Business with points:

"WARNING: Boarding pass printing not allowed due to unpaid items
Some boarding passes cannot be printed due to the existence of unpaid items. You can pay and collect your boarding passes at a check-in desk at the airport"

Only option is to pay for seat assignment (actually for me it's free, but for companion it's not because of no status in AY). IT works like a charm..

temppa

I was able to get chat CS to waive the charge for non-status companion few weeks ago.

JoWa

I´ve had the same problem twice, both times with companion still in Economy Comfort.
In the end I made them waive the fee but it wasn´t easy.
Legally I think they are on thin ice if they persist, we had paid the requested price for EC, and the airline should be bound to the booking after ticketing.
There was no provision that the EC price was only valid in the case the plat wasn´t upgraded, so...

intuition

We are just seeing the beginning of this kind of funk as Finnair is geared towards ancillary fees. They collect on average 14€ per pax IIRC and they want to increase this sun drasically.

Furry

In our case we are both upgraded to business, so assignment should be free for all pax. Maybe flight is full or something and there are no vacant seats. Lets see how it goes at check in. I suspect the worse as it's outstation departure..

miamiflyer8

Outstations are indeed bad as some are run by contract workers.

ff_flyer

It is actually ~11.3€ per pax, but the growth rate is a whopping 17% on year-to-year basis and AY is performing quite well compared to many legacy, network carriers.
US LCC's and a few European carriers are in their own league here.
It would be interesting to know how much of AY's ancillary sales are FFP related due to sale of points to customers or FFP partners.

JoWa

That makes it just unbelievable, not only ridiculous.
Seating choice is free in both cabins for golds as far as I know.
Must be some IT hiccup...

intuition

Ah, there you have it! It was said to grow to 15€/pax within the next 2years according to the capital markets day in may. Even at 11€ I find these numbers quite high as I suspect most travellers won't pay a dime extra.
11,31€ from 8 267 000 pax is 93,5 MEUR, compared to total revenue 1 746 MEUR, or 5,4% of revenue is ancillary. Or in per pax number - average revenue is 200€ per pax and then they extract another 11€.

Imagine an average Jorma buying a ticket for 200€ and going "I'm going to chose Finnair because they are 11€ more expensive". That is not going to happen and that is why airlines love the ancillary revenue.