Originally Posted by
1015-1k
I fully understand all your points. All the above (minus the UC) were generally functioning as perks ("something for nothing" if that's what you want to call it) for many years. I'm simply pointing out that they have declined substantially in the last two years. It's to the point where their "120-hour upgrade processing" is mostly a joke. The service, experience and perks are getting much closer to 1K or lower. Isn't that the topic of this thread??
I agree that 120 hours is a joke on most applicable routes and the perks are just those. Your description of the declining service levels is really troubling and that's what I'm getting at-- their service should be flawless and they shouldn't screw that up but clearly they fail to deliver on numerous occasions.
As far as the topic of the thread, I think that "the 'demise' of Global Services" is the topic and that any and all complaints are valid ones, but if one really hearkens back to the early days of Global Services, one can remember that there was no 120-hour window, there were no automatic 1K MileagePlus goodies (it was not MileagePlus status back then) and there was not even boarding pass notation-- it was just an internal designation with a corresponding high level of service.
If anything, it seems like there is a "regression" rather than "demise" of Global Services back to 'just' a high level of service with the additional perks added in the later years (perhaps a better description than something for nothing) being available sometimes rather than an inexorable guarantee (as they should be and were probably originally intended to be in order to encourage profitable behavior-- T to XN to PN was probably not envisioned to be published online as a GS perk). The only problem is that the "high level of service" is now grossly inconsistent.