Originally Posted by
mitchmu
To generalize, I think we can say that there is a segment of issues that have these characteristics:
1. It's not a bug in SHARES, SHARES is doing what it was pathetically designed to do, and
2. SHARES is giving correct, but incomplete or unhelpful information to the agent, and
3. An experienced and competent and motivated agent would know about the gaps in the information provided by SHARES and would know how to work around those limitations, and
4. There are agents who are neither experienced nor competent nor motivated, so, they give up and throw back to the pax whatever crap SHARES is throwing at them
In these types of cases, it's not a SHARES bug nor is it a lie that the pax is getting, but it's basically incompetence or laziness, and the consequence of the incompetence or laziness for the pax is now a lot higher than it was with Apollo, because desired outcomes can so rarely be achieved in SHARES without heroic efforts by both the agent and the pax whereas with Apollo, it automatically did the right thing more often than not.
That was a mouthful.
No wonder the agents have, for the most part, just given up.
No wonder, "there's nothing I can do" is the most commonly uttered phrase in $mi$ek's COdbUA company.
No wonder, I'm so exhausted from this that I don't know if I'll buy another ticket on COdbaUA again.
This actually reminded me of an issue just about 1 week ago that I had...
I was returning from ATL and received an email approximately 5 hours before my flight was to depart informing me that it had been cancelled. The system automatically rebooked my wife and myself on a 7am flight the next morning. This would have been great, but I was to be on a 8 am flight to Colombia the following morning.
I immediately called the 1k desk and the agent was extremely helpful and looked into connecting flights to get us home that evening. He was able to get us from ATL-DEN, but not DEN-ORD. He was able to get us from ATL to IAD but not IAD to ORD. He was able to get us from ATL to IAH, but not IAH to ORD. He did find us a flight connecting through CLE, but it left in 1.5 hours and I was 1.5 hours away from ATL airport. Being we only had carry-on luggage, I told him to book us and we hit the road.
Unfortunately it was a heavy downpour, so we couldn't make up the time as expected and realized we would arrive to the airport approximately 10-15 minutes before the flight was to depart. During the entire trip, I was searching different routes and found that I could book a ticket to IAH and also from IAH to ORD.
I called the 1k line back and the woman on the other end said that SHARES was not giving her that connection. She then, on her own will, checked the flight legs individually and verified that I could get home that evening going through IAH. She pieced together our flights in about 10 minutes and even checked us in.
So, moral of the story is....SHARES is screwy, which is probably what happened with your friend.
Reminds me I need to write an accolade for both agents.