Before landing or any time you like (breakfast)
fresh juices
freshly squeezed orange juice / carrot juice
smoothie
homemade energizer
fresh fruit
fresh seasonal fruits
yoghurt
plain yoghurt
cereals
home made muesli / cornflakes
cheese & cold cuts
selection of cheese and cold cuts
made to your order
scrambled eggs
cheese toast / grilled chicken sausages and tomatoes
or
Spanish omlette
grilled zucchini / mashed potatoes
sautéed herbed tomatoes
or
apple pancakes
ovenfresh
ovenfresh bread selection / croissant / Danish Pastry
freshly brewed
espresso, Turkish coffee, regular coffee, selection of teas
Suite
Landing
Arrival:
On arrival in Istanbul I was met at the gate and taken via golf cart to get a visa. I was told to stay in the cart, gave the girl visa money ($20USD) and my passport and she took care of everything. Going through immigration was a breeze. We (me and another F passenger) were taken to the Business / First / VIP immigration line. Even though there was already a line of about a half a dozen people we were escorted ahead of them and went right through.
Next I was taken to the baggage claim where we waited close to an hour for my bag which came out in the batch of last 6 bags. My escorts were clearly annoyed but making jokes with me saying they hope my bag wasn’t lost.
After I picked up my bag I was escorted to my awaiting car that was to transfer me to my hotel. I pre-booked the car service by calling TK a couple of days before my flight. On the way to the car I asked to stop off at an ATM to get some Turkish lira. The HSBC ATM which proceeded to eat my ATM card. I wasn’t asked for my pin code or anything just a message on the screen that said to call customer service for assistance. The girl escorting me offered to help at first trying to fish the card out of the ATM then she gave up and called customer service and handed her cell phone to me. I was told that today being Saturday the earliest my card would get retrieved would be on Monday and then I would be able to pick it up from an HSBC branch on Tuesday. I was only staying in Istanbul for 1 night before flying on to Bangkok so that wasn’t an option. My schedule over the next 3 weeks had me spending no more than 2 nights in any South East Asian city / hotel so right away I knew that chances are that I would be without an ATM card for a while. My escort asked what I wanted to do now. I thanked her for her help and said that I wanted to go to the hotel.
When we got to the car I asked about arranging a pickup for the next day to go back to the airport. Though she was trying to be as helpful as possible my escort’s English wasn’t very good and so she didn’t really understand most of the stuff I was asking her. My driver didn’t speak any English at all so I tried asking the girl for a phone number to call in order to reserve a car for the following day to go back to the airport. She spoke to the driver, grabbed a pen and paper from him and wrote down a number. I thanked her and left. Turns out she didn’t understand my question, asked the driver for something to write on and wrote down the phone number for HSBC which she taught I wanted to contact again regarding my ATM card. Anyway I was on my way to the hotel and about an hour later was at the Conrad.
Hotel:
I got to the Conrad around 12:30pm and was taken to the executive floor for check in. I was told that my room wasn’t ready and was asked to enjoy the lounge while they finished up cleaning my room. I decided that this was a good opportunity to try to sort out my ATM card issue as well as to schedule my car for tomorrow. I called my bank, Chase and explained what happened. Since I’ve never lost an ATM card before I just assumed that requesting that my new card gets sent to my hotel in Bangkok for Monday or Tuesday delivery was not an unusual request. Apparently this was not something that could be done in less than 10 business days. Since my plans had me traveling all over Thailand, Laos and Cambodia over the next 10+ business days I didn’t want to risk having my card sent to a random hotel in the middle of Laos so I asked if they can get it to me on December 21st when I would be at the Hilton in Kuala Lumpur. I was told that they can do this and so I gave my hotel information. At this point I had $800 in cash that was going to have to be stretched over the next 16 days since using credit cards wasn’t going to be an option in a lot of the places I would be visiting.
Next up was calling TK to order a car service pickup for the next day. My flight was at 11:40pm but my plan was to utilize TK’s free tour of Istanbul option the next day. There were two options, one was a full day tour leaving IST at 9am and second was a half day tour leaving IST at noon. While I wanted to do a full tour I really didn’t want to head out to the airport at 7am since I didn’t have the tour booked yet. I did try to ask my escort at the airport about tours but she had no idea what I was talking about. So I called the TK call center and explained that I wanted to do the free tour. I was told that they were unable to book me but I was given a couple of phone numbers for the hotel desk to try to book it with them. I also asked for a car pick up for 1030am and made sure to repeat the am part a couple of times saying that I knew that my flight was at 11:40pm but I needed the early pickup so that I can get to the airport to start the tour. Everything was confirmed (or so I taught).
My room was on the 8th floor and was finally ready at 145pm. The hour plus wait wasn’t a big deal considering that check in was 2pm plus it gave me time to make my calls from the lounge.
The internet in the room was 35-59TL per 24 hours depending on speed which I’m sure is a normal Hilton/Conrad price but I taught that it was a bit on the ridiculous side. Lounge had free Internet access via their computers or wired access to their network.
I loved the Conrad lounge. The views from both indoors and the outdoors deck were amazing. There were snacks, soft drinks, beer, etc available all day long and hot food available in the evening.
Conrad Lounge
In the morning I went up to the 14th floor for breakfast. The spread was great consisting of many cold and hot food options. Once I was done I went back to my room to pack. The on screen checkout menu didn’t work so I just left without checking out thinking no big deal as I didn’t charge anything to my room. I later learned that this was a mistake as I found that I was charged something like $170 for mini bar charges. While eventually this was all sorted out by email the person I was communicating with made it sound like they were doing me a favor. I don’t think that if I checked out properly it would have made a difference and would have still had those charges to deal with as a hotel like Conrad wouldn’t make me wait at the front desk while someone is sent to my room to do an inventory anyway.
I was at the front of the hotel at 1025am, 5 minutes early expecting my car to already be waiting for me. The car wasn’t there and right away I had a bad feeling about this. After about 20 minutes of waiting I knew that my car wasn’t coming since in a situation like this it seems highly unlikely for the driver to be late for a pickup. I asked the door man where I can make a phone call from. The door man asked for my room number and said that he would go and ask the concierge to call TK. After a few minutes he returned telling me that no one is answering the phone at the TK call center. I walked over to the concierge and asked them to call again. They did and this time got through but after speaking to the TK agent in Turkish they were told that without a ticket or PNR they would not be able to help out. At this point I got on the phone and the agent had no problem looking me up by name. I’m not sure why they gave the concierge such a hard time. We confirmed all my flight details and then he asked me if I was flying from Bangkok to Istanbul??? I explained that I was flying from IST to BKK and that I was currently at the hotel in Istanbul at which point the agent hung up on me. Just to clarify I was very calm and patient on the phone at all times answering all his questions as silly as they may have been so it was really shocking that he just hung up the phone.
My first taught that came to me was how would I take this if I was a seasoned paying first class flyer rather than a once in a blue moon reward maximizing FTer. It just didn’t seem like first class service, not only being hung up on but the defensive attitude rather than apologetic, proactive “let’s fix the problem for you” type service one would hope to expect in first class of a major airline.
I called TK one more time and this time after explaining the situation again I was put on hold while the agent went to check with a supervisor. When he came back he confirmed my cell phone number and said that he needs to investigate further and call me back in 10 minutes. As it was 11am I went back outside and asked for a taxi since I didn’t want to miss the 12pm tour and ruin my day.
The door man hailed a taxi for me and asked if I was in a hurry and after I said yes he relayed that to the taxi driver. My driver took this as a challenge and didn’t let heavy rain slow him down as he drove like we were in an ambulance. It was kind of fun and we got to the airport in under a half an hour though we did almost get into a car accident. We had to swerve out of the way of a car that just spun out and hit the rail in front of us. Right as I was pulling into the airport I received a call back from the TK agent I spoke with earlier and while he apologized for the situation, he still didn’t have an explanation. Once I told him that I was already in a taxi almost at the airport he suggested that I ask to be reimbursed for the taxi but right away said that he didn’t have authorization to offer me a reimbursement. I was then put on hold as he went to check with his supervisor. When he came back on he once again apologized saying that they couldn’t reimburse me from the call center and that I should speak with someone from TK at the airport.
After paying the 60TL (~$40) taxi fare I went looking for the hotel desk to see if I can still get on the 12pm tour thinking I’ll have plenty of time to worry about the taxi reimbursement after the tour. Once I finally found the hotel desk which was a pain to find, it is located down on the first floor in a corner next to the Starbucks, I had no problem getting signed up for the tour. In fact I was the first person there and only 2 others showed up after me. We were told that we had about 10 minutes to wait at which point I was finally able to relax knowing that at least I can now be back on track with my planned itinerary.
I used the 10 minutes to explain my car situation to the guys at the hotel desk. They called someone and said that a representative from TK will be over to see me in a couple of minutes. Sure enough about 3 minutes later someone from TK came over to me and apologized for what happened. In the 3 minutes since he was called and while on his way down he was able to figure out the obvious, my pickup reservation was mistakenly made for 1030pm. Forget the fact that I specifically said that I needed the car in the morning and the reason why, would it really make sense for a 1030pm pickup at a hotel which is 30-40 minutes away from the airport for an 1140pm international flight? Maybe the thinking was that TK flights are always delayed lol. Anyway I was told that they would reimburse me later tonight when I return from the tour. He did ask me if I took a receipt from the taxi, I didn’t and he said that this wouldn’t be an issue.
Conrad Lounge Breakfast
The Tour:
Because I didn’t have enough time I was unable to check my suitcase and had to drag it along with me on the tour bus. It was just another one of the little things that was annoying about this whole mix up. The tour wasn’t as good as I would have liked it to be. We only visited one site, Dolmabahce palace and then went to lunch. This was on a Sunday and I think that the itinerary on other days may be a bit better but it was also raining and cold and part of the tour was walking around outside so we skipped it. We were offered to be taken shopping or “anything else” but really don’t know what that anything else was. I wanted to see the blue mosque but that was only an option on the 9am tour. Since neither I nor the other 2 guys on the tour wanted to go shopping they were then taken to their hotel and I was taken back to the airport.
