Originally Posted by SFOvacations

Made a reservation for myself no issues throught he webside for a UA flight to Hawaii. Couldn't book any companions even after ticketing myself so decided to make the call. In less than 20 minutes the agent was able to collect information send me a reservation booking for review and ticket the booking for my 3 companions; confimration and e-ticket in my inbox before we hung up.

Thinking well that's not too bad, what's all the fuss about the phone booking nightmares...decided to make a 2nd booking a couple day later; this time I decided to just call for all 4 passengers so we can be on one PNR... took a total of 7 calls added up to about 3 hours to finally get it ticketed. Now that's more like it!

Some crazy stuff over the 6 failed calls
- one agent wasn't able to see the UA flight I wanted, but offered me a flight on AS??? She even got me a reservation code to review with the AS flight! Of course it wouldn't ticket, it was a X fare she pulled for the AS flight (X is basic economy on AS, T is economy award bucket). I had no idea Turkish was able to see AS flights.

- 2nd to last agent seem very competent but the system kept kicking back the wrong date onto the reservation confirmation (I wanted the 15th and it kept giving us the 14th, award seat was available on both days). He tried it 3 times and every time the reservation was created it gives the prior day. I was almost ready to give up and ticket and run my trip a day short but we got disconnected! It was meant to be because the next agent was able to pull up the reservation code that was previously created and changed the flight to the 15th and we finally got it to ticket.

Althought this time I received the notification that miles were deducted from my account but no email confirmation with eticket number!!! Luckily I was able to pull up the PNR on United and confirmed it was ticketed with eticket numbers. So the Turkish system is not even consistent with automated emails for etickets issued....

Considering the trouble not sure if it's still worth it next time...west coast to Hawaii is only 5000 miles more on Aeroplan, but then they also charge the partner booking fee.