gcashin

Totally agree - most of my calls to AC are related to IT fails. I've been putting off calling them for a seat selection change for some upcoming flights, as it's the app won't let me change seats, and when I try to do it online, it's trying to charge me a fee for a preferred seat as a SE on a Flex fare, when there should be no charge. I can do these easily via the UA app when traveling on UA metal, but I find most of my calls to AC are things like that where AC's app or website doesn't work.

YOWgary

Man, you're going to have a rough time when you get to your third or fourth airline, and realize this is either common or universal on DH8s, Q400s, virtually every 737 flying, and a lot of E145/175/190/195s.

May I also suggest that for your happiness, you avoid such comparably awful, third-rate airlines as Air France, British, Delta, Eva, Emirates, KLM, LOT, Lufthansa, Turkish and Qantas?

Jumper Jack

Oh come on Gary
That was seriously just a joke.. or an ultra fail attempt of a joke judging by your response :P

I already accepted 10 Abreast Y for what it is. If it allows for people to travel cheaply and facilitate movement of people and goods at a ultra low price, I guess its fine.
The problem as evidenced by this thread regarding Call center wait time is that despite so much capacity is added, AC did not increase the necessary resources in place to meet that extra capacity.

segacs

The problem is that AC sees its call centre issues as being separate from its IT issues. When, as you've all correctly pointed out, they're related.

I daresay many if not most calls to the call centre are for things that we SHOULD be able to do online, if a competent tech team were in place at AC. Nobody wants to have to phone and spend hours on hold and pay fees to do things like change or cancel a booking, get seat assignments, track lost baggage, request a special service or meal, rebook in the case of IRROPS, or the other dozen run-of-the-mill scenarios that happen a thousand times a day.

The call centre should exist to deal with exceptions only. Then the call volume would be much lower and the wait times would be reasonable. Plus, it would save the company lots of money, and passengers lots of frustration.

But as long as the website is a massive ball of fail, we can expect the call centre wait times to only get worse, not better.

Jumper Jack

As demonstrated by accurate representation of cross departmental(Silos) teamwork at AC

YOWgary

Stop turning Every. Single. Thread. into a complaint about your two flights on an HD 777 and you'll never hear another peep from me on the subject.

Stop comparing the HD to products you've never flown, on AC or otherwise, and I'll be quieter than Donald Trump's tax accountant.

The most useful FT discussions come from users comparing first-hand experiences. If you don't have many, there's nothing wrong with that, but trying to turn everything back into the one complaint you DO have isn't working out for anyone. It's not "a joke that missed", it's not that we continually "misunderstand".

Now...

That's the symptom, not the disease.

It's accurate that AC haven't increased their customer-service capacity, but the larger issue is that they've demonstrated over time that *this is the way they want it*.

United, Delta and AA have all executed massive mergers in the last decade, and yet manage to field customer-service departments that outperform the much-smaller AC, while AC still seem to be struggling to catch up to where they needed to be ten years ago.

I can't get Air Canada on the phone if I call from Hong Kong at 4 PM local, but I can get Cathay, SAS, Swiss and Turkish on the phone when calling from Toronto at 4 PM. As noted above, if I want to get UA on the phone, I need to set aside as many as ten whole minutes.

This shouldn't be a hard one to fix.

Air Canada continually choose not to put effort into increasing the service capacity of their call centres (and as organizational changes go, "hire more call centre drones" is not a huge disruption). Expansion is barely relevant, since they can't staff the volume they've already got, but looking at profitability over the last several quarters, they're not exactly strapped for cash.

The logical conclusion from this is that they've decided they can make money without delivering better results, so that's the strategy they're running with.

Bartolo

Isn't that what they just did?

YOWgary

ramsfan

This is an interesting thread for me. I have been super elite forever but decided not to bother for next year given the new $20,000 spend requirement.

As a super elite my calls were almost always answered immediately, to the point that I never bothered tracking time.

One of my concerns going forward has been having to hold forever once I lose super elite status. I am 1 million miler so will retain the 50,000 level for life. I have been told by AC agents when I call in that my waiting At the 50,000 mile level should not be much longer than super elite. I have been sceptical about that, but this thread gives me hope.

We will see.

Since I no longer worried about accumulating Air Canada miles this year, I have flown a number of WestJet flights. I was amazed at how quick my WestJet calls were answered and if it was not quick the ability to have them call me back was a great innovation. I do not know why others like Air Canada do not also offer this option.

nihonto

That higher than normal call volumes crap...

Sometimes with other companies I get an agent right after hearing that line. It's clearly a switch set to ON and has no off position.

YOWgary

They do - but in typical fashion, it's wildly inconsistent. I've had it offered on hold times of 10-15 minutes, and not offered on hold times of 90 minutes plus.

Marlin240

gcashin

They made the website look different. I haven't seen any changes to functionality.

It still won't allow me to change seats on a travel agent booking. It sometimes tries to charge me for preferred seats as a SE (in error). For reservations including partner flights, it doesn't show the partner booking reference. For schedule changes where it creates a longer connection/potential misconnect, you can't change anything online. All these are items that can be done online or via the app with many airlines.

So I don't think their website facelift addressed any of the issues that Cow or I were referring to.

Bartolo

My sarcasm wasn't obvious, I guess.

ffsim

I called Rogers today to make a change to my account. At 10:46 I was told that the current hold times are between 16 and 22 minutes and was offered the choice of an automated call back when I was next in line. I opted for the call back and received that call at 11:02.

16 minutes. Precisely.

It's all about managing expectations.