Originally Posted by
Bluekjp
I do this at approximately 25 or more times each year. 1 in 10 agents are able to book row 1 for your companion (s) immediately because they are authorised to do it. 7 in 10 will link the bookings and call a relevant supervisor whilst you hold the line and 2 in 10 have never known that they can ring through while you wait and insist that the bookings must be queued off. 1 from these 2 will put the wrong keyword in and the bookings will forever sit in limbo. If you get one of these 2 from 10 just ask them to link the bookings and do nothing else, after which you call back and almost certainly get another agent who'll book the seat while you wait.
Don't accept your bookings being queued off because during the wait you may lose the adjacent seats that you're after.
I loathe this whole process but it is what it is, and at least it's better than pre-covid when absolutely the only option was to have your bookings queued to India and often one heck of a long wait and usually the need to chase.
As an agent we arent authorised to put in seats like that, you might be speaking to a manager taking calls or else we call a manager to try and add seats. Otherwise its someone who is incorrectly using the option to add free seats for those with disabilities.
In my experience it isnt always straightforward and sometimes does need to be sent to backoffice.
Even if the mistake was a keyword you would be guessing because theres no way for you to determine that from MMB.
The mistake that is most often made is that people queue the companions booking instead of the Gold. The Gold seating queue reads the status and will reject any non Gold bookings. So they should queue the Gold card holders booking with notes in and the booking linked via TCP then back office will do it.