During the last seat sale I booked a YYZ-YEG trip. I was booked to return from YEG on Sunday at 12 noon. I finished early, and I saw that there was a red eye which left YEG at 12:30 a.m. (early Sunday morning). I phone AC reservations to ask what the load factor was, so I could determine whether or not I would cancel my hotel and try to fly standby. The agent checked for me and said the plane was 3/4 booked, so chances were good. He asked for my current res, and said he was going to check futher and put me on hold. After being on hold for a minute or so, he came back and asked if I could leave at 1730 on Saturday afternoon. I said I could but what would the fare difference be. He told me it would just be the $145 change fee. I said go ahead, he took my credit card info, asked me if I wanted to window or aisle and assigned me a seat. Well....get to the airport, and they don't want to issue me a boarding pass because I haven't followed the rules of Sat overstay. I explained to the agent (politely) that I didn't ask for this change, I just agreed to an offer from the res agent. She replied, "that you should know that the agent was wrong, and you should not have accepted." After some wrangling she came back and said that she would allow me on the flight as a one time favour, but would also put a note on my file that I know the rules of a Saturday night overstay, and any further attempts "to break the rules" will be denied.
Was I wrong to accept the AC res agents offer?? He had my complete file, I'm sure he could see what fare I was booked on.
Comments appreciated. Thanks

of course you were not wrong in accepting the offer. I'm curious what your original fare basis was because normally you would purchase up to the next fare available that would waive that Sat. restriction. The res agent was obviously trying to accomodate your wish to get home earlier. So long as any changes made to a file by res or ticketing are commented correctly then checkin agents really shouldn't be second guessing and hassling you. They should be smiling as they hand you the boarding pass and wish you a safe and good trip.
That's what most of us try and do. Stay away from the few sour face agents and try and time your checkin line to get the ones that are chatting and smiling.
Glad you got home early.

I agree. Thanks for acknowledging that fact.

How is the average person on the street know the fare rules. Get real. I don't know the specifics of all the fares I buy, and I know a hell of a lot more than the general public.

This shows my point in Guava's post. 1 employee is trying to be helpful and at the same time make AC $145 bucks on a seat that was going empty, another would rather piss off a customer. That (airport) agent should be fired or atleast demoted to a station attendant cleaning lavs.

Maybe it is the same staff member I dealt with in 1998 - yes I still remember the negative experiance. I was at a conference and one of our staff members was returning to Toronto - originally booked on AC, but transfer to C3000 due to the AC strike. She flew YYZ - YEG on C3000 and her return flight was a red eye. I checked the flights from YEG - YYZ, called res. and spoke with an agent explaining the transfer due to strike, etc and the desire to get home early on AC. The Res. Agent agreed to move the booking back and gave a seat asignment and confirmation - a great move to rebuilding loyalty after the strike.

So, the two of use go to the airport. I was on YEG - YVR, she as on YEG-YYZ. We check in and we are stone walled. "This is a C3000 ticket, why are you trying to board an AC flight?" It went down hill from there. I needed to get a supervisor involved and finally they relented and issued the boarding pass. During this experiance I am thinking - you are working hard to rebuild the client loyalty after your very recent strike!!.

So, we get our boarding passes and the person with me decides she wants to check her small carry on bag as it has been a long week. My experiance had been that A/C was fine with going over a bit on the checked luggage. But not this person - extra charge for the checked bag. Kind of like sticking the knife and then one final twist.

There's always something isn't there. We can only wish the cranky ones will be leaving with the next round of retirements, hopefully enought of them will decide to move on. Unfortunately it probably won't be enough to save the jobs of the rest of us with little seniority that enjoy our jobs, are proud to work for Air Canada and are usually pretty successful at getting you where you want to go when you want to get there and in comfort. I'm not a fan of unions and ours needs a reality check (oops did I say that).
Happy travels!

Hey... that's a coveted senior position on the ramp!

I should have known

BTW, this topic was timely in a way because once when calling AC recently, the agent that answered TA helpdesk started to say Tango then corrected and said AC. Is there confusion being created between the different products and could that be a possible reason why the agent that made the offer maybe missed the Sat. nite stay rule? Or could be the lack of training/experience that agent had. I've also talked to a few in last 6 mos. that I've almost had to hand-hold through a simple meal request or seat selection question.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to build excuses for AC, just guessing at possible reasons for mix-up. It may be true the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, or undoing as the case may be.

it is entirely possible that the reservations agent made a honest mistake and didn't notice that the Sat night requirement was not being met.

Nevertheless, when the airline makes a mistake, the customer should not be penalized. I'd like to think that most employees realize this.

But I also wonder if the second agent might be hung out to dry because of the honest mistake of the first. With AC looking to chop 214% of their workforce (or whatever the number is this week) I can understand employee's reticence in completing "errors" initiated by others. With everything going on I wouldn't be surprised to find that some (or all) are pretty gun shy.