superangrypenguin

Yes, we do!

Garbageman

Had to call AC last week to add an infant to a booking. 12 minute wait as I'm E50K.

What bothers me the most is having to call at all. I've booked flights on OZ, EY, KE, NH, UA and BR with an infant, and all of them allowed me to add him to my booking online. The only airline that I've encountered to date that requires you to call in to do this is AC.

zipo

UA has a great way that they call you.
You put your number in on the site and they call you.
Dansdeals had the link on his site, just search for united callback

canadiancow

They're only trying to "sneak" the charge in for Super Elites. I don't think anyone else is eligible for preferred seats on X fares.

And Super Elites all have a very efficient phone number. So I don't know what they're trying to accomplish if it's intentional

yscleo

For non SE's, people can still change reward seats for free (not to preferred seats, but to other seats). But if you do it online, they want to charge you. You have to call, and wait (for >1hr), in order to change the seats free. Last time we added our son to a trip, and called in to change the seat, it was a 1.5hr wait. Not fun.

canadiancow

Aeroplan can assign regular seats on Aeroplan tickets. So you could always call them, as the wait might be shorter.

Tax Dude

For some reason, my friends all feel the need to tell me their AC tales of woe. Yesterday, one of them (with no status) called AC to book a UM ticket for his 12-year old daughter from YYZ to DEN (can't be booked online.) He was all set to pay the $350 ticket + $100 UM fee. The estimated wait time was 55 minutes. He spent his time on hold browsing around on the internet and researching other options. After about half an hour he hung up and phoned Southwest to book a $150 ticket out of DTW. They told him that since his daughter is 12 she can travel by herself on Southwest, he can get a gate pass at DTW to drop her off and his sister can get a pass to meet her in DEN. It will be an extra 4 hours driving, but the $300 savings was worth it to him. When he phoned, all their agents were busy too, but they have a call-back system and they got back to him in 4 minutes.

In the past year I've phoned the general number for Air New Zealand, United, and BA for info or to make changes and never had to wait more than 5 or 10 minutes. AC really needs to improve their phone service, an hour wait when there's no ice storm is pretty unacceptable.

margarita girl

P25 to E75 all use the same number, and no, it is not instantaneous like SEs. The last 3-4 times I've called, I've always been told to expect a hold time of 60 mins. (Wonder what it is for non-status members!)

Anyhow, to add to Zorn's informal survey, I had to call 5 airlines today to book seats for summer travel. Here is what I found. (I have a list of phone numbers for almost all Star Alliance partners, so didn't have to search.)

NH - answered immediately
NZ - told to expect a hold time of 60 secs, but it was 3m15s (oh the horror!)
TG - answered immediately
OZ - answered immediately
ET - answered immediately

There wasn't a preferential line for people flying J.

Tax Dude, you should forward your story to Calin, or if the big man is too busy counting his millions, maybe to Ben. I'm sure AC knows how terrible they are (don't they), but might as well pile it on anyhow.

yscleo

Ah, now I wondered if I was calling ae or AC's line to make that seat change. So maybe it was 1.5hr wait with AC, and if I had called ae it would be 1.2 hr wait.

canadiancow

Disclaimer: I'm not saying the wait times are acceptable

Incorrect

Last year:
E35K & E50K shared a number
E75K had a number
S100K had a number

I have no knowledge of P25K.

Even on the E35K line though, I never had to wait more than a minute or two.

moorw003

Up until January 1st, I used Air Transat and Westjet to get me from the UK to St. John's... basically because I could buy single tickets.

From January onwards I switched to AC, on the basis I can take the risk with long term return tickets with semester dates set in stone knowing that the 50k status I should accrue will be beneficial.

The downside to the switch is the wait times. If I had an issue with Air Transat, I'd ring the travel agent Canadian Affair and sorted straight away. If I needed to change something with WestJet, sorted straight away. And by the way, how cheery and friendly are the WestJet phone operators, it's actually scary how happy they always seem to be!

Tried ringing AC to ask about a Maple Leaf Lounge access I'd purchased the other day with a flight in June that appears to be missing from my ticket, and the wait time was between 31 and 47 minutes.

Hung up and sent an email, which hasn't been replied to yet. North Americas premier airline folks

For the record I do in general prefer the AC flying experience (so I'm not just complaining for the sake of it), against Air Transat (WestJet are far more accommodating when the weather is bad, so I have no bad words to say about them), but the call centre waiting is far from helpful. Not sure whether the size of AC vs WJ has anything to do with anything... it should be supply and demand. If you have 100 customers and x number of phone operators and then you take another example where a company has 10x more customers you'd expect 10x more call handlers. That clearly isn't the case!

Maybe when I hit 35k status in August for the first time, things will change. I certainly hope so (insert grumpy face)

margarita girl

My bad. I started the year as E35, then noticed the number was unchanged when I moved to E50, so made the (incorrect) assumption that it was same number for all. Also, the greeting says "Welcome to AC Altitude members" which is another reason I thought it was same for all.

If they are going to have 3 numbers, shouldn't it be divided as follows:

P25 and E35
E50 and E75
S100K

canadiancow

"Thank you for calling the exclusive line for Altitude Elite 75K members."

Not the same greeting either

I think it's just one of those small things they're doing to divide 75K from 50K. It would be trivial (and cheap) to give each status their own phone number, so I'm a little surprised they don't do that.

Regardless, my longest wait on the E35K line last year was on the order of 7 minutes, and that was right after the Asiana crash. I guess 7 minutes isn't great or anything, but I've read enough posts here (and called in without status) to be content with it

rankourabu

And you are 100% sure that different agents answer the phones on the other end, and that its not routed to the same call center

Coincidentally, just called Delta, and it was 17-26 minutes with callback option.
Hung up and called their Medallion line, which has no membership verification

canadiancow

No, I'm about 99% sure it's the same agents. It's just a different queue priority. Very trivial system to set up.