Big thumbs up to the A3 call centre, solving booking issues
 

Big thumbs up to the A3 call centre!

I was trying to book an itinerary for myself and it kept failing before it reached the payment page. I must have tried it five times.

Meanwhile, the fares kept going up and up.

Thinking that there was something quite amiss, I called the call centre and explained the situation. Got through within a couple of rings, which in itself is very pleasing.

She said she could see the attempts, and that the system was creating bookings but without confirming it, reducing the availability. It looked like some part of the system was failing for whatever reason, so she said she'd release the seats that were held for my failed bookings, said to try it as a guest without logging in, and then add the A3 number later. Come to think of it, the website was behaving a little oddly, with Javascript verification, so perhaps there was a system issue somewhere.

It all worked very well! The fares had come back down after she released the wrongly-held seats, and I could complete the booking.

Anyway, it all worked. So, big thumbs up to A3 call centre lady. I was rather impressed, and thankful.

Yes, sounds like a very competent agent, so definitely worth the praise.

A3's website usually takes the fare out of availability once you go through to the payment page. I've often done dummy bookings after logging on and noticed that the flights are listed in MMB. They usually clear by the next day.

By the way, this was quite useful when they changed the terms & conditions of the upgrade coupons so that all U,P,T fares were not eligible. You could go on the website and do a few dummy bookings to knock out those fares and get the higher (upgradeable) fare buckets! Shortly after they did a u-turn, so those U,P,T fares are upgradeable if you select Flex fares, which makes it a lot easier.

@headingwest the seats are held for 24h if youre logged in, and 30min to 3hrs if youre not :)

Good to know!

That's a neat way to block upfront seats and then claim them before flight

:) yup, it works

Excellent thinking ;-)

A3's booking system seems to be a bit moody at times - especially if you book roundtrips with no more than two days (based on my experiences). I've had 5-6 bookings where I had to call the call centre too. In all cases, the agents were professional, patient, and friendly.

The availability blocking gap thing is a nice one :D

My failed one was a multi-city with one day in between, so there may well be something there with "no more than two days" bit.

A3 call center is one of the best in the industry, email service is stunning too.
Always took care of issues and fixed them.
Same for booking complex rewards on *A, much better than most of the big airlines imho.

Not to mention that in case of issue the follow up is done promptly and they are very efficient.

Congrats for that.

PS : let's propose TK to send their agent for a training with A3 agents because their CS is another style... the big headache style ))

I dealt with them 1h before one of my flights, I didnt expect them to resolve my issue so quick but surprisingly they called me back as they said and the issue was solved very quick (I was upgraded by a non traditional way (no vouchers, no bid, no opup but other deals with A3 marketing dept) and then downgraded when checked in again after I offloaded myself by mistake). it seems they are great when are dealing with their own issues, but I read some non pleasant experiences from other FTers when miles from AC didnt credit properly, so on...

yes, got some issues from SPG posting too and they where quite average but as they mentioned most of the time those miles transfer are made by a third party and they have little possibilities to influence.

From my experience the service on the ground at ATH is the opposite of what you get with the CS on the phone or email, they are really bad, not welcoming and are not problem solvers at all. Local bureaucracy mindset imho.

Ground services at ATH are provided by Goldair handling. There are some exceptions such as the connection manager (the one with the blue jacket) and a few more but grosso modo it's all (e.g. CI, gate, luggage, plane, busses) Goldair.

I was talking about the A3 ticketing office.
Regarding the handling company in ATH, I don't even want to comment... they should first learn how to manage a boarding property ))

I totally agree. Had excellent experience with them every time.
I need to add - in general I find CS in Cyprus superb. I even call CS in Cyprus for the other airlines, like Austrian, (even if that costs bit more for service charge).