Cannot even wait...must record - the MP hotline
 

It seems that whereas it used to be a very long wait on the MP hotline, at least it was possible to talk to a human being if you wait long enough. Now, there is quickly a recording, that they would reply within a business day.

Now, to me, this is worse.

1. One cannot even wait,
2. No hope of gettng something sorted out within 1-2 hours,
3. Not certain when they would call you, if ever, and whether you would be available to talk then. If you are busy or not available, then God knows what will happen next!

Edited to add - PS - I do not know why a green icon (with a face) appears next to the title!

Because this is so sad it is funny?

If this is the case, that's really disappointing. That's my biggest gripe with the SQ hotline, that when you call most of the time they are too busy for you to even wait on hold.

As the OP said, you don't know when they'll call you, and what you'll be doing at the time and sometimes the changes are urgent or last minute.

This is really bad news...

this isn't new, I realized this since January this year, I decide to call the hotline again instead of leaving my message.

Hopefully other carriers do not follow suit :td: :( :td:

that's exactly one of the only two reasons I'm keeping my CX DM (otherwise just AA EXP is very enough for me): (1) no need to wait on the phone and always can have someone from MPO to talk to (2) can have a decent priority to use all the big amount of Asia Miles I'm earning from different sources...

SQ actually has improved their reservation hotline in SIN. You don't get busy signals anymore and calls are picked up in less than a minute. A lot of people have been complaining and they actually did something.

What is most ridiculous is when people face a deadline for issuing a ticket. What then?

I believe people should consider bringing this state of affairs of the attention of the Consumer Council. This should help.

MPC does not handle non-award tickets. I can see there can be a problem when:
* A member needs to issue award tickets close to a deadline.
* A member needs to do seat guarantee for a booking with a very short notice.

The suggestion is to call at 2am HK time.

Even calling off hours doesnt seem to work now - today's is Labour Day in HK and the problem was there!

Calling off hours is usually in my experience even worse and wait times are much longer off hours.

sth to say about this insane act:
1) they will call you, but perhaps after you return from your trip. When I first recorded some time 2 mths ago, that was ~24 hrs before my flight (and I was calling them to try to redeem a ticket!) I left a message but called back later same day to sort it out.
They replied me just before I return from my trip. Thank you very much... and that was at least 2 days later if not 3 days.

2) It does work calling at 9pm-6am HKT. but you might get some random agents who doesnt know what Lisbon is. (Even after I spelt her Lisbon, she still cannot find it. I'm pretty sure they dont call it Lisboa in the system...)

and given the slowing business, pressure on cost/profitability etc, I guess they probably won't invest in having a bigger (outsourced) call center team any time soon ?

I think the solution here really is to work through a decent TA, especially for GD/DM seat guarantees.