I called at 1pm (HKT), expecting an engaged tone. No, it rang immediately. After entering my number, my call was answered immediately.

I was expecting calling a few times with engaged tones. That was better than I thought.

It's actually alot easier to get through the line then before, I remember a month ago it was horribly trying to get through, and everytime you called it was an engaged tone, either CX has steped up to the problem, or more people cant be bothered to call and sit on hold after numberous attempts !!!!!

I just got straight through at 16:45 HKT. Didn't help much though - it seems to me that only Diamonds can get to clued up agents - everyone else just is totally clueless and just blames "the computer".

christep... what happened? You're now "CX Gold" ????? :eek:

I would have thought you'd be Diamond for life !!

I wish - but Diamond for 7 years continuously (as I was) and 1M Club Miles doesn't mean anything to CX these days. "Loyalty" as they see it is obviously something with a horizon of no more than 12 months.

Unfortunately I have no business travel these days, and the new-ish Mrs christep isn't quite so enamoured with the running around maxing out xONEn tickets that's necessary to stay Diamond on personal travel. I'm not at all sure that I'll manage to keep Gold this year.

One thing I discovered today that I really miss is the fact that Diamonds don't have ticketing deadlines on CX - the deadline / auto-cancel thing is a real pain when trying to put together a full 16-segment itinerary and get it ticketed.

I had ticketed deadline passed twice and my bookings were not cancelled. I ran into that situation because of possible routing changes, and I did not want to ticket until the routes are finalised. It is very helpful.

I asked a MPC agent on this subject about a year ago. She just said "ur.. ur..". I sensed she was not supposed to say that. It is unpublished, and CX probably wants to reserve the rights to revoke it.

I do not have any problems calling MPC two days in a row (this time at 1:30pm). Did they increase the number of lines? Do people just give up calling them?

I've hit a few busy tones today, but I have noticed that when I do get through, enter my MPC number and 0 for an agent then I get to an agent straightaway. They seem to have rebalanced the system so that you get busy tone rather than ages on hold.

Or perhaps they decided to reduce the number to physical T1 circuits to the PABX/ACD system, thus the busy signals?

As far as I know, the MPC number also has an "international toll free" counterpart (+800 2747 5500), and they probably want to cut costs on incoming international call charges by having less people on hold for extended time. This would mean that if callers reach a busy signal, MPC would not have to pay anything (since there is no "answer supervision"[a telecom term]), but if they are on hold for 2 hours (as there is "answer supervision"), then MPC would have to pay for 2 hours worth of incoming "international toll free" charges.

I once had an agent confirmed this policy to me somewhat indirectly. I was making a booking for myself and my colleague together, and we already had the tickets but didn't have the ticket numbers with us, so I told the agent that we already have tickets that we'll present at check-in. then I found out the flight was 3-class and J was very full, so in order to maximize my upgrade chance to F, I asked the agent to split up the booking (my colleague is MPO Gold). Then he said...but, your friend is Gold only, if I split up the booking, her booking might get canceled any time without a ticket number...

Thanks for the info. That is good. I guess the unpublished no-deadline "policy" is applied to everyone on the PNR. That makes sense.

BTW, having both of you on the same PNR may only have a little effect on your op-up chance. You can get that by yourself, or sometimes with your travelling companion too. That probably depends on whether there are other DMs in J and how many are in your party. Being on the same PNR does not necessarily mean that the passengers have to travel together. Conversely, people travelling together need not be on the same PNR. They can still link the PNRs together.

That is probably the case, but christep is based in HK.