JANZFlyer

call again and quickly! It is amazing the difference between the call centre agents! Some people are lazy or can't be bothered.
I checked availability and cleared R class upgrades last week.

TravelMonkeyNZ

I called again, staff member apologies said the same thing. They did say they can hold the upgrade class against the PNR, but it now has to go to the upgrades team to re-validate the ticket which will take 24 hours. App now shows both PE and J sectors for AKL - LHR. Maybe it's just bad luck, have never had problems before!

mmonster

I had my first RU failed on me in 8 years from PE to J from LAX to AKL
the aircraft is just full..... when it comes to revenue, of course they are not going to put it through if they can sell the seats, I have checked, the full price for a J seat was over $10k USD

BZNZ

Yup, I just booked AKL to LHR and had the same thing. After 24 hours it went through confirmed though.

JANZFlyer

This is a different scenario though, the OP was told R was available. As mentioned, up until last week I had no issues.

Lpmnz

I recently bought 2x tix Akl -LHR in Y and called up to find dates that had A availability for elite Premium upgrades.
Found dates and instantly went about booking. After confirming booking then added all upgrades online. The Akl lax and lax Akl all cleared as expected, but the LHR- LAX did not. Rang up the call centre and had a lot of discussion, it turned out after I researched a lot that it was the premium cabin tax that was the problem. It took over an hr on the phone for the staff to calculate the correct £ to nzd tax applicable and charge that to me before the upgrade could be confirmed. Got it in the end but thought it was hard work.
Doubt many others would go to these lengths. Seemed ridiculous

sbiddle

I've flown multiple times from LHR with A class instantly confirmed at time of booking and never had an issue. When I've got to LHR Air NZ check-in have simply sent me to a counter to pay the extra tax.

kiwifrequentflyer

An hour on the phone to escape economy guaranteed on a busy route? Yeah no I think I would happily spend an hour on the phone 😉 almost every single person I know would not enjoy sitting on a phone for an hour but would do it in a heart beat.

JayKiwi

I have been down this route before, i.e., you are very much allowed to pay the UK departure tax for pre-confirmed upgrades, before your day of travel from the UK, instead of going to the customer assistance desk at LHR. While it isn't the end of the world attending that desk to pay the tax on the day, it is just that little extra stuffabout, that many of us could do without while travelling. Plus, you might prefer to use a different means of payment than one which you may be carrying with you. My experiences have been that usually the CSR figures out how to charge the tax over the phone, sometimes needing to check with another colleague before they have it sorted - it might take ten mins max typically.

The above seems to be in relation to Air NZ only being willing to confirm the upgrade post-tax payment, which is not a policy I believe exists.

Waiting an hour on the phone because staff do not know what they are doing as per correct policy? I would not be happy. If you take a broad enough view, you can justify anything, but the above reads as a stuff-up by Air NZ. I would tell them to call me back.

Unrelated, but I was talking to a member of the 'weekend CSR crew' on the phone the other day, and this person couldn't even read or understand a 773 seat map :-)......

Hector99

Perhaps time to start a ‘how long between lodging an eapd/ru and it being confirmed when you know 100% that a or r class should be available’ thread.

obviously there is a 0.1% chance another elite will have booked in those few minutes.

I booked a whole lot just prior to the commencement of this thread and it took less than a minute for me to be able to seat select in the confirmed upgrade class.

kiwifrequentflyer

My comment wasn't saying I would enjoy sitting on the phone, nor appreciate it, but the comment of "I doubt others would go to such lengths" is so erroneously wrong. The vast majority of the population will never get the chance to fly PE and would go to enormous lengths to fly it even just once, and to suggest most people wouldn't, is extremely out of touch of the economic situation of most of the population.

Thai-Kiwi

OT commentary....

Did you mean simply ‘wrong’? Saying ‘erroneously wrong’ , as a double negative, suggests you actually meant ‘right’ !

Goodness! Such hyperbole on a quiet Saturday evening had me thinking - do you actually know all this stuff about most of the NZ population? Impressive indeed.

kiwifrequentflyer

LOL OK. If you want to argue that I need to run a scientific poll to gauge whether the majority of the population who will never get the chance to fly it would trade 1 hour of phone conversation for PE over Economy, go be my guest 😏

I suppose it would be a hyperbole to argue that the majority of the population doesn't like their flight being delayed. Don't want to jump to conclusions on such a quiet Saturday evening!

Lpmnz

Regardless of what the “vast majority of the population” would be happy to do, the purpose of my post was to show the difficulty that can arise when trying to upgrade even when the correct, “instant” upgrade classes are available.
1 hr on the phone is negligible I suppose, when you know what you’re doing, my point was not many would know what they’re doing in this case as I have leant the system inside out over many years and this hurdle was a sizeable and entirely new one for me. So my comment was focused around that paradigm - an experienced airpoints member that got caught out and had to research and spend excess of an hr on the phone vs a lesser experienced member whom might have just given up, and therefore not had their upgrade cleared. The difficulty, in my view, was ridiculous.

kiwifrequentflyer

No I mean, that's fair. And as someone pointed out to me in another thread, the experience of the phone attendants at processing more advanced requests has become more and more variable. Something I appreciate about Air NZ that will make me choose them over Qantas/Virgin is fast phone service I get as an elite. So it's something I am taking notice of.