36902BRF

The credit card business model is NOT nearly so impacted as the airlines. The vast majority of those including myself who travel regularly have stopped and there is no clear end in sight at this point. My use of credit cards is down (mostly because I am not travelling) but it is far from 0 which is what my travelling is at this moment and for the foreseeable few months. There are no guarantees in life of course but I expect my CC companies to make it through this. Also at least in the US the regulations on banks are much more customer friendly than those on the airlines and most banks are automatically bailed out in the US due to concerns about runs on banks. I realize this likely does vary by country.

BrianDromey

If people have their wages cut by 60-80% then the credit card companies and loans business should do well - I appreciate some, or many, but by no means all will save a little every month and have a nestegg, but those who have recently bought houses, cars or have children in school/at childminders probably don't have enough in savings to keep them going for 6 months. So there is likely to be an increased demand for short-term credit. While all travel card users should be paying off their balance, in full, every month there probably are some who aren't and these are the people where the profit lies. In the days of 0.3% interchange fees no-one is making a handsome profit from travel cards which are paid off every month.
It is also worth bearing in mind that interest rates are at, or equal to historic lows - while credit card fees and interest rates are not.

Dn10

Any chance the change fee waiving goes beyond May 31? Have a June flight.

ROKNA

Can't see a full schedule operating in June

EI need to make the call by mid May to be 14 days ahead of any cancellation

irishguy28

One presumes most of the staff are now working from home. I really wonder if there is the option to "scale up" the helpline workforce in that manner, such that multiple staff - including those who never worked on phones before - can receive calls at home and change all the flights as necessary...

Of course I accept that it is and should be possible - but do we know exactly if Aer Lingus can suddenly switch to this massive working from home setup?

It has been a huge struggle for my company...and that was even with a large percentage set up to work remotely already.

ROKNA

Problem for EI is the legacy IT doesn't lend itself for at home, biggest issue would be actually issuing laptops to staff with the IBM terminal SW for Astral

Frequent flyers among us will be on first name terms with folks in the AerClub office and also some of the check in/lounge staff who are capable of doing magic with seats and changing flights

What EI need is a few programmers to automate the voucher generation sort that and a major problem is solved. The online tool is fine if you want to simply change dates if you want to swap LGW to LHR, or EWR to JFK, DUS to AMS etc you have to talk to an agent and that is painful.

Dieuwer

Same here.

AudenHoggart

Aer Lingus is now telling me that their "no fee" change policy only applies to flights booked through aerlingus.com. We booked our tickets through Celebrity Cruises (in conjunction with a now-cancelled cruise out of Dublin.) Aer Lingus appears to still be operating our Boston-Dublin round trip flights.

Anyone have any experience or advice in dealing with this?

Thanks!

DELLAS

If it was booked through Celebrity cruises on a package then they are responsible to give you a FULL refund either a future cruise cert for the FULL amount paid or a cash refund. Friends of mine had this exact problem with the same cruise itinerary and it took 3 calls
and a supervisor to get it sorted. Get onto Celebrity ask to speak to a supervisor and make sure you are firm that you booked a package so everything is covered and they should not be making you deal with the airline either. Your contract is with Celebrity Cruises as per
your Terms and Conditions. Just to reiterate forget everything Aer Lingus have told you don't deal with them direct anymore Celebrity have to sort it all out and doing anything yourself will muddy the waters and might leave you with a situation where you have accepted liability for the flights and let Celebrity wash their hands of their package obligations.

irishguy28

As the previous poster noted, your point of contact should be Celebrity Cruises.

When seeking to cancel any form of travel booking, you must always turn to the agent who you paid and dealt with. You did not book airline travel directly with the airline, so you cannot go directly to the airline now, having instead booked and paid for the flights via an intermediary.