capedreamer

I'm scheduled to fly SFO-MUC on AC756 SFO-YYZ and AC846 YYZ-MUC in 13 days, booked in Premium Economy N.

This morning, I tried to request an eUpgrade online, with AC756 within the 14-day request window for transborder flights and showing availability for upgrade. But upon submitting the upgrade, the page displayed an error message stating that I would have to request the upgrade at the airport. That is obviously not ideal.

So I called in, first speaking to a SuperElite and later a Concierge agent. Both initially confirmed that my itinerary should be eligible for upgrade but ran into the same error when requesting it from their end. Both agents then tried calling the helpdesk, and both reported that the helpdesk explained the error is due to this itinerary being an international flight, and thus subject to a 7-day request window.

I knew this reason not to be accurate because (a) the website clearly showed I was eligible for upgrading the SFO-YYZ leg and not the YYZ-MUC leg, (b) in any case, I could of course choose to only upgrade one segment of an itinerary, and (c) I have taken many similar routings in the past with no problems requesting upgrades segment by segment as the booking window opens for each.

When I tried to explain this to the phone agents, both dismissed me and simply repeated the helpdesk's answer over and over again. There was nothing I could do even though I knew the answer wasn't right. Finally, I decided to give it one last try and called back, and the same Concierge agent I spoke to earlier tried requesting the upgrade again, and magically it worked.

At this point, I thanked her for her help but expressed my frustration that while IT issues are unavoidable, it is very disappointing when staff try to justify them by making up explanations that are inaccurate. In this case, if I weren't an experienced flyer and a persistent pain in the butt, I would have likely lost out on the upgrade. The agent curtly said goodbye and hung up.

A customer, whether SuperElite or otherwise, should not have to speak to 3 different individuals for over 30 minutes to complete a simple request that should take 2 minutes online. Nor should s/he have to convince Air Canada employees that s/he knows the eUpgrade rules better than they do.

D582

These sound like the same experts who say Latitude upgrades only come from R, when in reality they can come from P or Z too depending on the flight.

YYT82

PointWeasel

Agreed. But its not only AC that has this HUCA challenge. Last week it took 5 HUCAs with AM and 3 HUCAs with UA. I overcame with UA challenge with their Philippine call centre staff by remembering my Spanish and reach some good agents based in Chicago, Houston or Mexico City.

I doubt any of your fellow AC FTers are surprised by this sequence of events and the subsequent frustration with AC, but you hung in there.