I just want to share my experience with changing an award ticket booking with Cathay Pacific. I used my own account to redeem the ticket for my wife. Somehow the website thought the ticket was a "Companion Award Ticket" and didn't allow an online self-service change.

I first reached out to Online Chat and got directed to a HK agent. The agent was very unprofessional and kept refusing to waive the additional $40 service charge (in addition to the $50 rebooking fee) despite my explanation. I was even asked to send a screenshot of the error message which funny enough the online chat doesn't support at all. After I asked the agent to double check, he/she just left the chat. Very rude.

So I decided to give a call. Surprisingly the call was picked up within a few minutes despite being a Green Member. The call agent was able to make the change very smoothly. I was informed about the service charge initially but after I explained the situation the fee was waived.

I didn't expect such a drastic difference in the services. It might be a one-off thing but based on my past experience with Cathay's online chat, the agents are less professional, less trained (keep telling me no seats available despite I can see the availability on my side) and sometimes simply horrible. This seems especially true for agents from HK using English.