Originally Posted by
jsnearline
Before writing customer relations, I contacted US reservations and asked them what I should have done differently under the circumstances. They told me that if I had listened to the entire after hours message, it gives an alternate toll-free number to call in Hong Kong.
Not trying to be rude here, but it would've solved your problem if you just called CX Hong Kong reservations. It's daytime in HK during the US evening. Maybe this can help you sometime in the future. Intl calling costs are virtually nil these days with Google and Skype. While Cathay has offices all around the world, Hong Kong is headquarters. Dialing HK from Google is 2 cents per minute..hardly a burden. No intl calling plan needed. Takes 5 minutes tops to setup.
In general my impression living outside the US is - right or wrong - the customer is expected to have a higher duty of responsibility, as long as the company provides a solution. CX Hong Kong reservations are quite accessible (unlike Cathay's MPC club, which is a complete disgrace for non-elites). And as you mention, you even had an outlet - you could cancel the ticket and rebook immediately. Your credit line and fraud alerts are your own business, not CX's. Again I don't mean to sound harsh, but that's just not their problem.
It'd be one thing if it was impossible to reach them....but that's really not the case. And the compensation culture where the customer is always right doesn't quite exist in Asia. You've got a burden to book your tickets correctly and, if you make a mistake, the responsibility is on you to find a way to rectify it. Not the company.