Promo@wards in Europe 1/2/3
 

Not sure if this should go into the "award booking issues" thread...

Basically, when I look up, say, ICN->CDG, I can easily get the direct AF flight at full price in miles, but not the connecting KLM flight, ICN->AMS->CDG at Promo@wards price - it doesn't even show up in the results.

Now when I look up ICN->AMS, promo@wards availability is there (direct KLM flight at 50% of the miles); and in my experience I've never seen the "post-acheminement" flights (ie AMS->CDG in this case) be the bottleneck for these tickets.

In the past (and I've done this at least 3 times now), I would book the "main" promo@wards flight, and then call FB and argue for an hour (literally), and they would add the connecting flight manually (and charge me the additional taxes) even though they're "not supposed to touch promo@wards tickets".

Is there an easier way? Is there a way of making it work online? Or does anyone have a "script" that works well when talking to FB on the phone?

Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts :)

Vitali

I had a similar experience, but not with a promo award. I wanted to book AMS-SFO via CDG award ticket and I got nothing. When I tried CDG-SFO it give me a premium voyageur seat. I called FB and after some hassle they added the AMS-CDG leg, so I could fly AMS-CDG-SFO.

At least with a regular ticket they can do it. Officially, they're not supposed to be changing promo@wards, so that requires a lot of hassle.

Yes, I understand that. I just wanted to say that the online system sometimes isn't correct, so they should do it anyway. But KL telephone staff are keeping more and more to the rules, instead of bending the rules since the website isn't working correct.

I've never had the FB team refusing to help me for a promo award when my phone was the result of a computer glitch (not unfrequent). They've even always been very nice and apologetic on these particular cases.

Isn't it just who you get on the phone? Last time I wanted to book a DL156 flight (normal booking-no award), which wasn't showing up on any KL or AF website. The girl on the phone had to search for 15 minutes and then told me I had to pay the €25 booking fee. So I tell here the website doesn't work and it should be €10. In the end I had to threaten with a written complaint about the supervisor of duty, since she wasn't willing to grant the girl the permission to change the fee.

The old days they just put it in the PNR and booked it for €10