Experience with ticket change
 

I just want to share my experience with changing an award ticket booking with Cathay Pacific. I used my own account to redeem the ticket for my wife. Somehow the website thought the ticket was a "Companion Award Ticket" and didn't allow an online self-service change.

I first reached out to Online Chat and got directed to a HK agent. The agent was very unprofessional and kept refusing to waive the additional $40 service charge (in addition to the $50 rebooking fee) despite my explanation. I was even asked to send a screenshot of the error message which funny enough the online chat doesn't support at all. After I asked the agent to double check, he/she just left the chat. Very rude.

So I decided to give a call. Surprisingly the call was picked up within a few minutes despite being a Green Member. The call agent was able to make the change very smoothly. I was informed about the service charge initially but after I explained the situation the fee was waived.

I didn't expect such a drastic difference in the services. It might be a one-off thing but based on my past experience with Cathay's online chat, the agents are less professional, less trained (keep telling me no seats available despite I can see the availability on my side) and sometimes simply horrible. This seems especially true for agents from HK using English.

I find the chat previously very slow to reach someone from, even when trying different languages. The phone has always been very straightforward and find that whilst the customer service agents don't have native levels of English, they are very professional and well trained. Everytime I've requested something, from multi-city itineraries to changes, it's been handled first time and well.

I see this is always the case when I redeem for redemption nominees.

Does anyone if I would like to add a sector to an existing ticketed redemption flight, is it considered a change where USD50 required?

I currently have an upcoming one-way CX HKG-AMS redemption using Asia Miles, and if I were to add TPE-HKG (which has plenty of availability), is it considered a change? or do I need to cancel and re-book? Thanks.

Reissue:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...l#post34921444
http://www.hongkongcard.com/forum/fo...w.php?id=18885 #6 and #7

Am reminded of this

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/cath...et-change.html

"[In respect of QR chat]Definitely quite competent service and miles better than most other chats and chatbots offered by airlines and hotel companies that are completely useless. This agent deserves a great rating and I submitted it after."

Other airlines defintiely include CX.