KenHamer

They're working on killing it?
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Diabeetus

For me this is enough hope to say that it is a glitch.

Hopefully they resolve it soon.

YEG_SE4Life

I think you are looking at a tree bearing fruit and calling it potatoh. Your statement was that AC's technical glitches are always in their favor. I pointed out that your statement was, in fact, false. You are doing exactly what you accuse AC of doing in other posts. Your earlier statement wasn't about them being quicker to fix mistakes that aren't in their favor. You said their glitches don't go that way. They have, and they do.

KenHamer

Nevertheless the fact remains that mistakes in favour of the customer are fixed blazingly fast compared to mistakes in their own favour.
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rehoult

Care to point to an industry /company where that isn't true? Fixing issues causing revenue loss faster than ones that cause revenue gain seems like a fairly basic rule to follow.

YEG_SE4Life

It is not true with Air Canada. As I pointed out earlier, they sent me a gift that I wasn't entitled to in my SE package for 2016. They also sent me a letter indicating that it was an error, but they wished for me to keep it. One of my threshold gifts, this year, was sent to me twice. I sent them an email asking how to return the second one, they told me that I could hang on to it.

ridefar

If I was insufficiently clear in my earlier post (and looking back at it, I definitely was), I was referring specifically to AE's mistakes, or more generally mistakes in the benefit program. It is unclear to me how this is actually an AC mistake, or an Altitude mistake (assuming I even accept the mistake hypothesis). I deleted a bunch of stuff to that effect earlier before I even posted it, but... How could an Altitude "mistake" cause a total loss of J IKK capacity offered by a separate company? Yes, it is more opacity, and no I am not naive enough at this point to think that AC or AE will clarify.

Let review the facts as we know it: AC now claims there is no longer a meaningful correlation between R capacity and J IKK. J IKK is currently completely unavailable. AC won't clarify (despite the fact that it would be enormously helpful) what fare bucket J IKK does depend on. AC hasn't said when the decoupling between R and J IKK happened (but lets assume that it happened when they deliberately decoupled R and J IKK -- because Occam lets us do that). In what way is this an AC mistake? An AE mistake maybe. Not AC.

The mistakes on AC's part (IMO) are: failure to clarify which fare bucket international J IKK comes from; failure to communicate clearly and quickly with its customers (how hard would it have been to proactively send an email to all SEs admitting a mistake and asking for patience while it is fixed?), failure to understand how crap AE is as a search/booking tool and provide us with the fare bucket as a reasonably alternative to using AE.

So... when has AE ever made a mistake in favour of the customer in terms of availability? SQ did and owned it. This isn't the first time AE has f'ed up IKK either. Previous time, IIRC, was basically the same thing: it went away, it eventually got fixed.

Culturally, the two companies are cut of the same cloth at the management level. Don't communicate with your customers. Obfuscate. Treat them like idiots or children. Offer them as little information as absolutely possible. Use phrases from a marketing brochure rather than clear, simple, concise plain language Moreover those behaviours are even more evident in their statements and treatment of customers around benefit programs and IKK specifically. So if you wonder why I say the potato smells like weeks old fish (to butcher the metaphor completely) you really don't have to look further than AC's behaviour. And I guess I will continue to blame them rather than AE, because hey: a) they seem to be speaking for AE, despite the legally and factually questionable practice of doing so, and b) if AC is going to say that AE just runs their program, but it is AC's rules, then I guess it is AC to blame when things go sideways. Just like most people here are perfectly happy to blame AC IT even though IBM IGS runs it.

Given all those things I still don't think this was likely a real mistake. Trial run more likely.

rehoult

Oh I have nothing against AC, in fact I have found them to be a very gracious and fair company to deal without throughout my years as a FFer.

My point was merely at the other poster. Being surprised that an airline, or anything company, fix something like a mistake fare faster than they fix a $5 overcharge in their favour is asinine.

ridefar

I guess you might get better treatment once you are one of their top 50 or so customers of all time?

I don't think your experience is a very good basis for generalizations.

YEG_SE4Life

I didn't generalize I gave actual specific facts. The point is they don't always make errors in their own favor and they don't always rush in to fix errors that they don't, by the previous statement, ever make. That is all I'm saying. The statements are false. Regardless of how much you yabutt.

pmax

I am happy that they not only acknowledged the issue but did so in a very public way. Clearly it's a problem in their side and they owned it. It's rather bizarre to see people complaining and arguing conspiracies.

pmax

They did say it is decoupled. Search the forums. They also said their internal system is busted and they're fixing it. So w.t.f.??

canadiancow

When did AC ever state that it was based on R? It has correlated with R, but R is for upgrades, not IKK.

Who says it comes from a specific fare bucket? Things don't work that way.

How do you think there's regular fixed mileage X/I space available to Aeroplan that isn't available to other partners? It's because it doesn't come from a specific fare class. It comes from an RM algorithm.

ridefar

I don't need to search because I read it and acknowledged it. However they didn't say so publicly, they said so in a private email to BB, who then posted in. They (AC) actually haven't said anything at all on the subject publicly.

And if it is now strongly decoupled (as in not even loosely related) that is a change. To pretend otherwise is just dumb.

You and Cow can pretend that this is just business as usual but that is just not the case.

It may not have been 100% linked to R, but there was a very strong positive correlation previously. If Ben is saying that it is now not, and that is to be taken as any sort of literal truth and not just more marketing bs, then it has changed.

So the statement of facts I made, is, in fact, correct. Not sure what you have a problem with. The only way it would not be correct if Ben is (again, IMO) deliberately using imprecise or inaccurate language in his email to BB, which you could then say the whole present scenario is just a giant CF, and that apart from the "glitch" nothing has changed over the last 18 months with respect to IKK availability. And I say imprecise or misleading because it is pretty obvious to anybody that has an EF subscription and pays a bit of attention that R capacity was a good enough predictor for IKK that one could simply use EF and search for R and actually search quickly rather than having to labour through the AE engine. It was a very strong correlation.

Still with me?

Or you could keep going down the path that private correspondence is public communication, that opacity is openness, and that not providing your best customers with a reasonable amount of information is just fine. You could. But I can't imagine why. AC communication is terrible. This is just another example. Trying to say everything is fine just doesn't hold water with me. (And to be clear on this: I am not saying AC is terrible. If I thought so, I wouldn't fly with them. I am saying their communication is terrible.)

And I don't like how it edits out whiskey t-a-n-g-o fox trot either.

canadiancow

But Ben is not saying that.

All he's saying is that IKK is not based on R space.

There is a strong correlation between R and IKK, which will return once Aeroplan fixes this issue.