Originally Posted by YEG USER

I had my first experience with this yesterday and things did not run smoothly at all...

After this announcement was made, I booked a trip to YVR for several of my colleagues. I specifically put them on AC in Flex knowing that if our meetings ended early we'd be able to standby for free for an earlier flight. There were WS flights available for approximately the same time for the same price as AC's Tango fare.

Our meetings ended early and I dropped my colleagues off at YVR. They are not experienced travellers so I loaded the AC fare options webpage (the one now showing that AC Flex gets free same-day standby between YEG/YYC/YVR). My colleagues went to check-in, and the agent insisted that there is a $75 fee, even after being shown the AC website. Wanting to get home early (and figuring I was mistaken), my colleagues paid the $75 fee and got home earlier. They phoned me to tell me what happened; I wasn't impressed.

A short while later I returned to YVR to catch my flight to YYC. I checked in via OLCI and figured I'd asked to be put on standby at the lounge. The agent said I couldn't be put on stand-by because the flight was oversold. I replied that I was looking for stand-by, not a confirmed same day change. Both lounge agents insisted that there was no such thing as stand-by for a Flex fare. I showed the website, they eventually found an "exception" somewhere in the system confirming that I was right. By this time a 3rd agent was there and all 3 were astonished that such a change would be made without being communicated internally. They all thanked me for letting them know about this and added me to the standby list.

I got to the gate, the flight was oversold so I asked to be transferred to the next flight. By this time I was joined by another colleague trying to get on the same flight. The gate agent also insisted that there was no such thing as stand-by for a Flex fare. I showed the website, but that did no good - plus she said that even though the website indicates its allowed, it doesn't say that it is complimentary (she did have a point there).

So, off I went to the customer service desk. Same story, neither of them had a clue about this and said it couldn't be done. I showed the website; the agent asked me to bring it up on her own phone for CYA purposes in case she did this and got in trouble. The customer service desk agents couldn't locate the change (looked for it in something called ac-pedia?).

I went back to the gate to ask the agent a question, and before I said anything she thanked me for letting her know about the change; that she was finally able to find the information about stand-by and added me to the list. She printed off the note to show others and stated that she had been hoping for such a change for a long time. She too was astonished that there was no internal bulletin sent out informing agents of such a big change.

After failing to get on the 1st flight (I also found out that the 2nd flight was oversold as well), I decided not to use the Concierge to get on the stand-by list. I knew I was only going to make the 3rd flight (my original booked flight) and was treating this as an experiment to see if what happened to my colleagues was a one-off incident, or if it was a widespread issue. Clearly, after our experiences this is not an issue of one or two agents not knowing of this change.

Bens, can you please do something to improve knowledge about this?