Warning for upgrades with infant
 

Once again, the Macro Polo Club has surpassed my expectation of poor service for mileage upgrades. I get the impression that they intentionally make things difficult for members who want to upgrade their tickets using AsiaMiles.

I booked a J-class flight from TPE to SFO (via HKG) back in February for departure on June 10. I am traveling with my wife and infant. I made an upgrade request to F-class last month and was finally confirmed today. When calling in to check on the process for my infant, I was forwarded between Marco Polo, CX eService Center, and CX ticketing. When I finally discovered that I would have to cancel my infant booking and make a new one for NT$60,000, I decided that it was no longer worth it to upgrade. The CX agent to me I could call Marco Polo and cancel the upgrade in that case.

Upon finally reaching Marco Polo, the agent told me that they couldn't refund the miles since my upgrade had already been issued! This is shameful. When I first spoke with them, I specifically indicated that I wanted to know what was involved with the infant upgrade. The agent made me wait through a long process before transferring me to the CX agent to find out (I actually had to call back since my mobile dropped the call while I was on hold for 20+ min).

So, according to Marco Polo, there is NOTHING THEY CAN DO to help me, since I already asked for the upgrade to be issued. What nonsense. They won't even let me speak with a supervisor to solve the issue. I want to know what is going to happen to my booking now, and what will happen to my baby's ticket!

This is the second miserable experience I have had trying to upgrade a ticket via Marco Polo Club. They just keep putting my on hold and making me wait, then finally attempting to force me to pay for a new infant ticket or throw away 170,000 miles because of their screw up.

I'm not sure what good this is besides venting. Hopefully nobody else will make the same mistake as me. I'm very tempted to trash my Marco Polo membership and move to another OneWorld program. There are a lot of downsides to that, but I don't see what I am getting out of this current relationship if I can't even use the miles i have been earning.

Shame on Marco Polo Club and shame on CX for allowing this kind of service to persist.

It gets better. After a long conversation with a supervisor, my miles have entered the twilight zone since I refuse to accept a refund of the miles as an upgrade certificate (means i get the miles but only for CX flights) with 1 year validity, since there is no guarantee that I'll be able to make use of those miles within the new time limit. They did agree to cancel the upgrade and take this up again after I get back from my trip.

However, only after my questioning the supervisor if my original flight was still ok did he discover that efficient Marco Polo Club cancelled my original booking after they issued my upgrade. This would not normally be a problem except that business class on my flight is now full! So, Marco Polo Club was once again trying to railroad me into paying almost $2000 dollars for my infant to fly with me or lose my booking entirely. Naturally, I was pissed and let the supervisor know it.

After my call being disconnected while on hold, I finally received a call back 15 minutes later with the great news that my original booking had been restored. Whoopee! I managed to waste almost 3 hours out of my day to achieve nothing besides wasting 170,000 miles.

I certainly won't forget this. It will be interesting to discover what Marco Polo Club proposes when I get back. I will post an update then.

I think the only warning is that be prepared to pay a high cost to take your infant into the premium cabins - I assume you thought that given the infant doesn't have a seat/premium meals/etc the cost would be minimal despite the class upgrade.

Yes, CX could've been more sympathetic but everything they've done is in line with the norm. Yes, they cancel your original booking when you confirm your upgrade, and yes, once you've confirmed your upgrade it cannot be cancelled although you can change dates.

Depends on what you mean by "minimum". It used to be 10% of their published fare, and now I think it's 25% (based on last thread on this, forgot the exact percentage), let's assume 25%.

So an F ticket published fare is about $20,000 and 25% of that would be $5000 easy (USD). That's what the OP should be prepare to pay, and maybe more depending on what CX published fare is.

It's pretty ridiculous when you consider the infant doesn't really get anything. Not a seat but just an infant belt and just a couple of infant milk bottles from CX.

This is a warning to passengers with infants for all airlines.

What CX did was in line with industry practice. Infant fare is based on a percentage of full fare of the cabin he/she is in. Also, you can only downgrade if the appropriate booking class is still available. If you do a search on infant and outrage, you will find a good number of threads in various airlines forums. I once paid around $2000 for an infant F on NW. :(

I'm sorry to hear of your experience, it is always too bad when customers are displeased with service levels.

However, my opinion is that the F cabin - this is my opinion only here, and I'm just a single businessman who happens to be a CX frequently flier, so take this with a grain of salt - is indeed quite a premium product, and I believe customers should have to pay significantly more to obtain the luxury of sitting there. Ex-TPE J tickets are already pretty cheap to SFO (somewhere in the $90-$100k NT range if you're buying D class, or about $3k+ USD). In my opinion, $60k NT is hardly anything to pay for the infant round-trip in F. Indeed, customers paying for J or F probably should be able to afford that, and definitely I know when I'm seated in F I absolutely do not want other pax bringing their infants into the F cabin for minimal or no charge. As a paying pax I would expect there to be a significant hurdle for infants, to reduce the # of aspirational F pax taking their kids to the front of the plane. Definitely a bit of caveat emptor here (when buying with miles), F is not meant to be cheap and ancillaries (such as infant fares, unfortunately) will not come cheaply.

For me, it's not so much about what the infant "gets" or doesn't get in F class - it's the fact that they're there, and despite how great all the parents think their kids are there is definitely the statistical probability that the kid is going to cause some sort of a nuisance, potentially alienating a high-rev pax who is paying full fare F. I can say, as someone who does enjoy flying F, that (for me) F has little to do with what I "get"....it's more about what I don't get (or get less of). Less noise, less lights on and off, less bustle, less talk, less movement in the cabin, etc. etc. It's just overwhelmingly more peaceful than J class. Adding kids, I think on average it can be agreed, generally adds to all of these things. I know some young children are amazingly quiet and well-behaved (and definitely some adults are just the opposite), but I would say on average the probability for disturbances are likely higher for a really young one, unfortunately.

I do, however sympathize with the customer service angle. It does seem like you should be able to get a miles refund but you'll probably have to play it cool. Although they can seem unwavering and ridiculous sometimes, I've had a number of instances where MPC and reservations have really gone the extra mile for me against their policies in the name of common sense, after I got through to someone (usually a supervisor) who is empowered to make real decisions. To me, this was very appreciated as a customer. Each time I was patient, polite, but firm with my points (which I thought had a bundle of common sense, I wasn't trying to "scam" the system in any way). One was for a full Y refund without any change fees, because I went full-fare J on the route instead (I originally bought Y and and was planning to upgrade with miles, but ultimately went in paid J instead). It seemed odd to me to have to pay a "refund" fee even when I was going on the same flight and paying almost 65k more HKD for the privilege! It was slightly insulting to add a HK1200 refund fee on the original Y ticket since I was going to fly on the plane anyway, and the supervisor was kind enough to agree with me. Another time (x2) I had to change my CX flight date due to other airline delays. Once I missed a flight due to a 30+ hour JAL delay I had last year, another was a 12+ hour AA delay this year. There was a change fee for each CX flight, but were waived by CX despite having bought the JAL and AA itineraries separately. They were totally unconnected to my CX itinerary (one was NRT-HKG, the other was SFO-HKG).

Each of these three instances, CX's initial response was "no." But I was patient in explaining my logic, and had no problem after spending a little time on the matter.

It's not the infant fee that I have a problem with. That's a CX policy. What I have a problem with is Marco Polo Club taking this approach with an upgrade request.

I wanted to know what I was going to have to pay for the infant upgrade before going down the road of no return, but the Marco Polo Club agent must have assumed that I wouldn't care and processed the upgrade anyway without making it clear that I would have to pay for the infant upgrade cost or lose my ticket. Since they didn't know the cost and had to transfer me elsewhere before I could find out, they should have postponed processing the upgrade until I had all the information necessary to make an informed decision. The cost of the infant upgrade is materially relevant to the decision to make the mileage upgrade. Had it cost 2x as much as the original infant booking, I would have agreed to go ahead, but this was not the case, and I find it unreasonable that Marco Polo Club would have put me in such a situation without any recourse.

On the upgrade issue, I do think that CX should allow mileage upgrades for infants (perhaps at 25% of an adult upgrade, to match the price for an infant ticket), but that's their policy decision and irrelevant to my complaint.

I can understand your frustration, yet I know of no airlines which would allow mileage upgrade of infant tickets.

Yes. However, most parents who take their infants on flights the first time are not aware of that and therefore will not ask. As mentioned, this is not really a CX-specific issue.

good advice...does anyone know if CX is the only airline to charge lap infants 25%....

When I process a mileage upgrade for my wife and infant son, I did not realize I would incurred a cost, and neither did the agent tell me up front. I ended up paying anyway, no biggie, but it would be nice to know that beforehand before we were upgraded and charged.

The OP seems to be surprised by this, but I think the big disappointment I have with CX in this instance is that CX can't simply cancel his request and give him his miles back. That I do not understand.

If CX is aware of the infant during the confirmation, CX should see that there is an infant who cannot be upgraded.

It sounded like the supervisor was planning to revert the transaction (and if so, OP sould have his miles back). However, J (or at least the original booking class) is full. Therefore CX cannot cancel his request.

If I were CX, I would put them back in J, refund the miles, and op-up other passengers so that everyone would be happy.

Were you dealing with CX in Taiwan ? that office is useless, talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. I have had the misfortune to deal with them twice and they wont even give a name of who you are talking to or anyone else that works there. I ended up going to CX in HKG directly and was rewarded with a senior manager taking up my case and I understand he came down on them like a ton of bricks. Last flight a few weeks ago he was waiting to meet me off a flight at 6 30 am to say hello. He mentioned they do has some issues with the staff in Taiwan, how very diplomatic he was.

I so agree with this post, sorry to say but no kids up front no matter who you are.

Emirates only charge 10% of mileage cost to upgrade an infant.

There are some programs, e.g. QANTAS FF that charge nothing for an infant redemption in Business or First. This is specifically mentioned in the T&Cs [14.3.4]. So you could have theoretically bought the same seat & infant fare using QFF points.

NB, Asia Miles did let the OP know on the website, in the FAQ section: