Originally Posted by themicah
Does this mean that the agent who helped me with the EWR->LGA switch (and refund of the difference in fare) violated company policy? (see my last post) Or did she actually cancel my original ticket and reissue it, yet somehow manage to keep the same PNR code? Note that the "reissued" ticket still qualified as an online purchase for purposes of the referral program that was running at the time (my fiance, who I recently saved from OnePass was also on the itinerary--she earned her first-time online purchase bonus and I earned an extra referral bonus for her buying the ticket online).
What likely happened was that the ticket booked on the web had not been ticketed when you called, so the agent made the changes without a problem(there are no penalties to change/cancel and unticketed reservation). As for the online bonus, PNRs have a field for the original booking source, and that's probably where WorldPerks picks up the info for the online booking bonus.
As for whether this will work with the $5 fee, if it's $5 for ticketing with a phone agent, in this scenario, the $5 fee will still apply.
Originally Posted by wldtrvlr
If it is true that Sabre is making $500 million when its customers are all loosing money, than they need to lower their fees some.
Sabre's fees are not relevant. I am not paying them. Northwest is and that doesn't matter to me. If they spend money giving a raise to reservations agents or spending their website, that really doesn't concern me here as far as paying ticketing fees.
Sabre is indeed a middle-man, but what Mr Lenza neglects to mention is that participation in Sabre and other GDS is voluntary. NW can pull out from Sabre if they don't want to pay these middle-man fees. JetBlue and Independence Air are both not listed on Sabre. If you don't want to pay the middle-man fees, then don't deal with the middle-man. It's as simple as that.
Originally Posted by HeelLaw
Just a thought -- if Northwest had not effectively recinded the industry-wide $20 increases on several occasions, would people be freaking out like this?
An "industry-wide" fare increase is far different from a carrier imposed ticketing fee. Fares rise and fall all the time - they don't need to be announced and don't generally vary between booking sources. Ticketing fees are a completely different matter.
Originally Posted by HeelLaw
Out of curiosity though, what exactly is the complaint?
That there are domestic routings that can't be ticketed online but can be over the phone? Logical ones (as opposed to Mileage Runs)? I've had no problems books tickets on nwa.com that involved NW-only routes or NW-partner combo routes (such as to SBP on American Eagle).
While I recognize that people without internet access may be inconvenienced here (again, just like they're inconvenienced in many ways in today's society), my personal experience is that the website works fine for domestic agendas, which is all that this change affects.
As mentioned, nwa.com has a number of things that one cannot book online. For example, try booking SEA-AUS and only connections via MSP show up. No connections via IAH (which offfer more flight options) appear. This is only an example of a number of things that nwa.com cannot do.
To say that it works for me and then think it's not a big deal for all is rather narrow-minded.