jrob747400

Do you guys know if they are working on the online sys? It's a joke. I tryed to book a award ticket online (open miles) form IAH to AMS on KL. It keep on telling me it's 80k and $4984.60 usd. And when I try booking online it never tickets.

Emma65

Are you kidding me?

I was on the phone the other day with a guy (tricked the system and pretended to want to book an award ticket but actually wanted to find out when the heck I'm getting my bleeping card!) and asked him why it has to be so complicated to book an award?

- what do you mean?
- Well, to find an award to US and not having to use open miles you have to try date after date after date, even all sorts of date combinations. Why can't you just have a system that will show you the various availabilities for various miles in the period requested?

Honest to god, this is the guy's response:

- I will write a letter to microsoft and ask them to buld a computer that can do that.

Yes, a few days on I'm still picking up my jaw off the floor.

I did tell him that Microsoft does not need to build new computers for this feature but that all that is needed is them having people in their IT and web department who actually THINK and also who know what they are doing. And oh yes, I did add that Continetal do exactly what I asked.

Then the guy goes snippy and asks me if I have an actual question. So I move on to the card issue.

At the end of the conversation I ask for availability to US in December - any date and any destination will do. So he checks. LHR-CDG-JFK shows availability in Y for 50k miles return. Looks like there is for the entire month. I'm adviced to check online. To which I tell him that online all I find is openmiles, if I'm lucky, and nothing else and I do have other things to do with my days than to sit and enter dates in to the webinterface to find what I want. And it would be so much easier if the site could just suggest dates to me....

- Madam, do you have an actualy question?

I give up and put the phone down.

/E

rhodeswood

Got to agree. I booked an award trip online last month for MAN-CDG-BKK return. Was quoted 110k miles for business class and went ahead and confirmed it. Wonderful.

Then by chance I found myself killing time at Malaga Airport and went into the AF office to check my reservation. "You are confirmed in economy class Sir". Fair enough, FB had only charged the economy cost of 80k miles to my account, but that's beside the point - I booked business class.

The helpful staff at AGP sorted it out for me by telephone, so I won't be suffering an economy long haul, but had I trusted the online booking service and just turned up to check in, it could have been a very different story.

albireo

See this thread (I love to quote myself ) for another display of AF people's brilliant expertise in information technology. In that case it even came from the Web helpdesk (I guess, people who are supposed to be knowledgeable, or did I get something wrong?)

Emma65

Yeah, I read that one. I was laughing so hard I nearly wet myself.

And "my guy's" response baffled me. I'm a MAC user myself (OS 10.4.2, Safari, Firefox or (spit spit spit) IE). I really should have told him to contact Steve Jobs instead as maybe he could get the websites right by using MAC instead of Microsoft.

And by the way - since when did Microsoft actually build computers?

apirchik

It's nice to see that the French is counting on the Americans to fix his problems!

Emma65

With the risk of being classified as a french basher (which I'mnot. Honest!), history never change. It repeats itself.

X-ON

I can add to the criticism of the award booking engine and FB. I experienced when I tried to book an award ticket to SIN form ARN the booking engine presented a lot of weird routings. Particulary the transfer to CDG was routed through first to AMS and then to CDG which incresed the travel time enormously. I called the FB helpdesk and the Dutch woman I spoke to manage to book and award with an ordinary routing.

I must confess that the times when I have had problem talking with FB (read: rude operators) I have been connected to a french person (at least by judging by the english accent). However I by no mean hate France or anything and really enjoy flying AF nice FA and so on. So I wonder if the reason to the fact that we sometimes think that french people are rude more often than other people is a matter of language barrier and diffrences in languages.

/Anders

beaubo

Ok, so there is a consensus that the online booking engine sucks.
* doesn't show all potential routings
* doesn't calculate taxes correctly
* can't book intra-US awards
* doesn't calculate award levels correctly


Soooo, just expect to pony up the extra Euros to deal with the HelpDesk. For your booking fee 'investment', at least you'll get more accurate (if not totally acuurate!!) info.

Regarding the 'bad apple' agents, just hang up and try again!

pinkcity

I'm sorry to think that this is really a gap which has been introduced by the "french part" of the technology ; being part of these funny french people who was plat through KLM and not AF, i have booked in the past (last one in last march) at least eight rewards flights on KLM websites without any trouble, just taking caution to be at least three months in advance ; since flying blue (it was already the case with F+), the best tool is definitely the phone ; the waiting time can be harrassing (but definitly less than any hotline of Internet suppliers, whatever their nationality), and I always had an excellent service, either from KLM and AF, either in English or French (to reduce the waiting time, it's sometimes better to ring the "service in english", even for francophones)... Definitly not a good point for the french technology, which is actually an AF technology, and nothing else...

Pinkcity

Falco Peregrinus

I don't see the problem. OK, let's say you want to travel in December, any dates between 1st and 31st. Minimum stay: 1 day. Departing on the 1st, you would have to test 30 dates for the intbound. Departing on the 2nd, 29 dates to test. Etc. In the end, that makes 30+29+28+...+1. Remember your math lessons? Yes! =31x30/2=465 combinations!
Assuming it takes 1 min per set of dates, that's exactly 7 hrs and 45 min. This is the worst scenario: you test all the dates and finally find out that the only availability is to depart on the 30th and to come back on the 31st.

Ah, yes. Multiply that by the number of destinations.

TGV

110 kmiles for MAN-CDG-BKK ???

Are you sure it was not 120 kmiles ? Because this is what costs a CDG-BKK.

I know that you can buy a business class ticket at less expensive prices when flying from UK (or Belgium) than when flying from Paris, but Awards also ?

rhodeswood

The quote was definately 110k, which I thought at the time was some kind of special offer, as I have bought award trips for the same routing in the past for 120k.

After a few days I got to wondering whether some sort of cock-up hadn't occurred, hence my visit to AF in AGP. Damned good thing I did too!