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Old Sep 11, 2020, 5:46 pm
  #13  
EdmFlyBoi
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Vancouver
Programs: AC SE100K 1MM, FB Platinum, Bonvoy Platinum Elite, IHG Gold Elite, Hilton Gold
Posts: 1,583
Originally Posted by sokolov
I got the ticket issued! It took another 90 minutes on the phone (measured from the time I got to talk to an agent).

I was prepared: I had the error code from the flight pass webpage, "RC=400 component=EIP”", which appears for Sept 26 searches, but not for, say, Sept 27, where it just told me that not flights were available. (The agent didn't know what those codes meant either.)
AND I had actually booked the itinerary as a normal ticket under a different name in Economy Flex, booking class V, on the Air Canada website immediately prior to calling in. (That was easy thanks to Google Flights.) So then I could reference the booking code and tell them that that's what I wanted to book using the flight pass. (I will cancel the normal ticket within the 24 hour period.) Luckily, I did not fill up the V basket with my ticket.

Is it OK to mention agent names here? She was great, understood the problem, managed to get someone from a different department (she did not say helpdesk but something else which I didn't understand) to work on this to try to manually build the itinerary. That person confirmed that the problem were, indeed, the long layovers, which were not to be expected when Flight Pass systems were originally programmed. (I get that.)

After a long while she said it didn't look good, but that they would keep trying. After about 70 minutes on hold I was told it would work, but that for flight passes it was a special lot of work to manually build itineraries, so it would likely take another 15 minutes. 20 minutes later it was all done.

Thank you to all who replied in this thread.
It seems you were finally able to reach a knowledgable agent who was able to understand your problem and fix the issue. Some agents are great - I had a concierge recently override the maximum connection time on a flight AND get it upgraded for no extra credits over and above the combined credit charge. It's helpful to be polite and persistent.
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