Originally Posted by
Mackieman
I don't think it's so much giving the benefit of the doubt as it is being realistic about the complexities of sharing information between several private companies that have different systems. Expecting everything to be perfect every time and then harping on how wrong it is when it doesn't work correctly at every available opportunity is akin to beating yourself with a hammer and wondering why the nail won't stay in the wall.
There isn't an airline out there that has a perfect track record at booking partner reward seats, much less anything else. My comments, and I believe those of Steph3n (though I don't presume to speak for him), we related to the fact that the OP titled this thread, "Is Continental using Starnet blocking?" which is a silly supposition given the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Nothing is perfect, and airlines certainly fall short regularly. If your exacting standards demand that your interaction, and the interaction of anyone else who posts here, be perfect and correct 100% of the time, I sincerely hope you find something else in your life to bring you joy because you must be awfully bummed out.
The whole premise of StarNet is that it alleviates some of the complexities to which you refer. In fact, on Day One of joining the Star Alliance, CO already demonstrated a much better ability to book partner awards, simply because the software was easy to use and did things that agents wouldn't have thought of before. And frankly, this is software that's in use by two dozen airlines, and it's pretty solid.
That said, nobody expects anyone to be perfect. Though people deserve to be treated reasonably during service interruption. If there is an issue with CO booking partner awards, why can't their IT send out a blast message and the agent ask for patience or maybe to try back tomorrow?
It's not the failure that's the issue, it's the handling of the failure that's the problem.