Tried to call the Basic aeroplan line this morning. Got the standard "your wait time will be 20 min." I put it on speaker and wait.
Surprise! it rings after 15 min!. And rings and rings and rings. I counted 48 rings. Then I hung up. It was really a fun time. I got a lot of work done at my desk during that 20 min. I didn't get through to Aeroplan though.
Thats not too good. Does Rupert care? I wonder.

I would love to know what AC pays for the toll free lines. . . . wouldn't it make sense to properly staff them?

On Saturday night I had a voice mail from United letting me know my 6:40 am flight was cancelled because of the weather and to call back. When I call back, using the phone number from the phone book, my call was answered in about 5 minutes. Not bad!

muskoka....
Lisa from Air Canada telecom here....if you could advise a contact for yourself, I would like to get some details of this call from you.
Please reply to email address above and I will get in contact with you.

wow.. I am impressed....somebody from AC actually wanting feed back?

Lisa you should be cloned...smile... and thanks for caring.

What is "Air Canada telecom"? Never knew such company existed.

Empress
Not a company. I work for Air Canada in the I.T. telecom department.

Just an update on this little matter... Lisa from AC telecom has taken the details of my call to Aeroplan and is going to pull the call log to find out why this happened. As I said to her in my e-mail: I know its her job to make sure the phones WORK, but what we need to work on is the "warm body" side of the equation. I indicated my thanks on behalf of ALL of us for caring and taking the time to respond to what may look like a trivial matter, but to Joe Customer is an important issue. Thanks Lisa!!

Now about that cloning thing.....

well muskoka... we can try, can't we???

After my nightmare of a day on the phones with AC yesterday... something seriously needs to be done...

Won't go into that story until I cool down a bit, and still I am extremely upset by all of those calls yesterday...will share at a later time.

Pele99 a.k.a. Lisa:
Way to go. That is being proactive. Pass on the word. We could use a few more like you to solve a few problems.

Hopefully the person from the AC IT Telecom Dept comes back to read my posting...the Aeroplan IVR system is driving me nuts! Yesterday I called into the 1-866 number and they have brought back that 'thank you for waiting' message which can not be bypassed and doesn't make sense since I am NOT holding, I am simply trying to get account info via the phone since the **** website doesn't provide 'current' account transaction information!! It gets worse...then after finally entering your 9-digit Aeroplan number, you get another message about 'if you qualified for the 2001 benefit year'...2001? Huh? What? This one can be bypassed by pressing any key, thank god. The third complaint is this: now, instead of putting you through to an Aeroplan agent when the IVR system doesn't recognize a partner code in your account history, the system puts you right to the beginning of the Aeroplan IVR menu - "Thank you for calling Aeroplan..." Alright, I have had enough! Someone had better fix this before I really go nuts.

Agreed...it is driving me nuts too.

You can book and change award tickets online at Northwest (and have been able to for the better part of 1 year now). It also costs only 18500 miles right now for a domestic roundtrip (although going to 23500 starting June 1).

In addition, ANYONE can pay 38500 to waive all capacity controls.

What a concept...allowing people to redeem their miles, 24 hours a day.

P.S. If you want to do it by phone, you don't get the 1500 mile discount...and the wait when I tried to call the regular desk (for non-Elites) was 4 minutes.

Please AC, just fix the **** Aeroplan lines!

I think your request is fruitless. Anyone running a call center knows exactly what their call wait times are. Most business would be scared s*itless with the number people are reporting they are waiting on here. I don't think AC has any plans to change it anytime soon. Didn't someone ask good ol' Rupert this in the last chat? Maybe someone will this time.

BTW, as I posted on another thread, the BASIC line for NW World Perks at about 12:15pm EST today had a wait time for...wait for it...ONE MINUTE!

Oh but wait, good ol' Rupert doesn't like comparisons with US frequent traveller programs.

[This message has been edited by Andrew14302 (edited 03-25-2002).]

As I posted in the "Rupert meeting - results" thread, Rupert told us in the meeting that he is not hiring one additional Aeroplan agents. We've got to wait for the launch of the new website to see a possible relief in wait time.