Q Shoe Guy

Noticed on the Tozai Line in car monitors in Tokyo yesterday that AC (or was it Canada?) advertising the glory of Canada on Air Canada. Specifically shown was the new service on the 788 from HND. Would be good not to change aircraft on what is supposed to be a premium $$$ route especially when you are advertising it heavily....

Sopwith

Sorry, Ben, you just hit one of my buttons. In this context, "free" doesn't mean you don't pay for it. Once I buy a ticket, everything that comes with it is bought and paid for. When you say "free" what it actually means is I've paid for it whether I use it or not.

TANSTAAFL.

airbus320

This thread is truly a focus group for AC.

yyz_atc_qq

Oh NO!!!!! This sounds a lot like married segment logic which is a HUGE pain. Please don't tell us that AC is going to get married segment logic.....

Jasper2009

+100!

Dealing with married segment logic is a huge pain when trying to piece together an itinerary. It's bad enough that I can't book most itineraries on the AC website and I have to waste time calling AC or dealing with a TA. If AC adds married segments restrictions it may just make more sense to book with another airline.

FlyerTalker683455

While I am glad to be charged just $50 or $75 even though my original ticket states $250 or $300 for a change fee, the opposite sometimes applies, where it am buying a ticket stating $100 change fee and being forced to fork over $300.

The same happens with aeroplan tickets. Just recently changed the outbound only, same flight numbers exactly, by two days, and got hit with a $460 charge which wasn't even disclosed on the phone. So much for a free change or $90 change fee.

Arbitrary charges just don't cut it and I don't see how that should be an intentional way to do business. You are issuing tickets and making the fees up as you go along.

When even the agents can't figure this out, then who the hell makes the decision to charge more or less than what was stated on the original ticket purchased?

You call this being competitive? I call that being amateurishly cheeky and possibly fraudulent.

FlyerTalker683455

You are joking right? Putting adverts at full volume over the PA system and telling me I should be grateful for the free entertainment. I am starting to think you had too much of your own cool aide. In military circles, hitting the opposition with unwanted loud sounding music is considered a method of psychological warfare. I suppose that's part of your business plan. Congratulations.

FlyerTalker683455

Y code share connectors aren't occasional. They are a fixture. I have yet to see any connector, say in Asia, showing any z fare on the code share segment. Even call center agents can't find them. So that's simply not evidenced by reality, I now end up nearly always booking two tickets, one in flex on AC to the gateway city, and one in j/z on the connector to my final destination, instead of z all the way, AC loses, the other carrier wins and I save money,

bingocallerb22

Just discussing. The less well versed traveler may not know to HUCA and be left with the wrong answer, not good in anyone's eyes. Better versed travelers on this forum recommend “hang up, call again”. But what is interesting is that many here have access to separate call lines and hence get your better agents and still recommend HUCA. Of course, calling again increases your call volume and workload. Question: Do you have any idea of the frequency of inaccuracy for call ins, or is that too difficult to assess? You must have some metric in place, otherwise how would you know if you have a problem or not? You say “sometimes” - how did you come to that assessment? Is “sometimes” 5% or 20%? Surely a 5% error rate is significantly different, from a business perspective, than 20%.

Jasper2009

Leaving the discussion about "hang up, call again", I'd like to ask two related questions which often come up on this forum:

1) Most FTers seem to think that SEs' calls get the highest priority, but there are no dedicated SE agents / there is no actual SE desk. Is this correct?

2) Do all AC agents go through the same training? / How standardized is training? Quite a few FTers think that the agents in city x are consistently better trained than in city y, and I've personally experienced huge differences between the AC call center agents in various countries and even make an effort to call the AC office in country x when in a different country.

PLeblond

OK, my apologies to the mods. I know this forum is supposed to be kept for Q&A with the Bens, but I can't hold back.

Seriously!?!! You have access to present legitimate gripes to AC and you chose this? OK... You have a right to ask and you did, then you got an answer and you still harp on this ??!!??

You are forced to hear it, but you aren't forced to listen to it. Are you forced to look at all the HSBC signs on jetways? No, you're forced to see them, but not look at them. You are travelling in and out of airports all the time, you are being bombarded by advertising (visual, auditory, olfactory) every step of your trip from the hotel, to the taxi, to the airport, to the lounge, to the gate, to every sign in-between.

Honestly, your biggest gripe with AC is the advertising over the PA on rollout???

And I'm not asking people to pile on all of their little peeves, I'm just suggesting people use this forum as an opportunity to communicate constructive criticism of important issues directly to AC.

FlyerTalker683455

I have probably over 500 touch point opportunities with AC per year.

Web bookings or searches, booking management, upgrade make the vast majority.

150 call centre inquiries. I would say 1/3 go well. 1/3 are long winded due to help desk requirement. 1/3 are poor but maybe due to my patience and persistence only a handful required a HUCA strategy

60-100 checkins per year. 95 percent fine. Occasional confusion with same day change, baggage allowance, misconnects or baggage delays. Of baggage delays 100 percent were resolved in all my flying years (decades). All misconnects are handled properly as far back as I can remember, although requiring SE concierge to handle.

I think on average I run into a Lowe present age of poor customer service due to status and my own knowledge as well as access to priority lines. Non status customers are probably left hanging far more frequently. In my case I have basically never had an unresolved issue, although many many frustrating experiences on the way to resolution, of which a handful required intervention by the Bens' executive assistant team in Calgary.

End result is that customer service is not satisfactory in too many cases. Even if resolved it can take hours on the phone to do so. Not good.

FlyerTalker683455

Well, look. It's annoying. And shows lack of courtesy to their passengers. Especially because we are bombarded, once on the plane it would be nice to have a bit of downtime. There have been many comments made about excessive announcements as well. Not the biggest issue, to be sure, but it was one point of many I made and Ben decided to highlight this one out of my discussion.

Shareholder

All well and good but two issues related to the MM program have never been answered publicly. I understand that among airlines offering such programs, the miles counted can and have varied. And I can understand AC's decision to only count base flown miles on its aircraft over the years. However considering that every other airline that offers such a program has recognized such mileage flown on airlines they have absorbed, as well as such miles flown since the beginning of their FF programs, why has AC decided:

1. Only to recognize miles flown on AC and not CP? By excluding this mileage you are telling those customers you don't consider them part of the "Air Canada family" because they were "traitors" back in the days when that airline was a competitor.

2. Why do base miles flown between July 1984 when Aeroplan started and 1989 when elite tiers were introduced not count towards this program? If the intention was to acknowledge as much of a lifetime of flying with AC for those retiring, or soon to retire, you've eliminated about 15% of their flying...and more for those AC customers who had been invited to join the original Maple Leaf Club as CIPs prior to instituting the Aeroplan FF program. You recognized CP-earned miles when CP+ was absorbed into AE, why not apply the same principal to the MM program?

The given reasons appear to be that you no longer have records for CP's FF program, but I've never heard an adequate explanations for not counting the first years of Aeroplan. (I will accept you have no records for one's travels prior to mid-1984 though considering you granted your CIPs free membership in AE, you would know who these "charter members" were and might have acknowledged that prior travels with AC, or TCA.)

In effect, AC has told members who fall into either or both of these categories to "piss off", we don't give a "flying fig" about your previous business. As someone who has indeed been hit by this double whammy, you've basically said my business over 40+ years of travel isn't of any interest to you...and so I have responded by flying AC as little as possible. Give me a single reason why I should support a company that slams the door in my face after a lifetime of doing business with them?

martyYOW

+1 - I think we need to keep this to proper q&a - there's lots of other threads to gripe about certain pet peeves. I'm hoping the dialogue continues as this has answered a lot of questions I had. Whether I like the answers or not, it is good to have them.