Wait... what?

Kiosk Receipt
 

I've faced similar issues at my job after buying B/M ups.
I'll check in again at the airport kiosk and hit "print receipt".
Receipt prints with original fare class and nothing about First Class.

I understand that now. Silly for me for not understanding something that was counter to simple logic. I've said it once, I'll say it again and again and again, there are way too many crazy quirks to the OnePass program.

Everyone's life -- especially CO's -- would be so much easier if their system accounted for things like usability.

When I get an EUA within the 5 day window I have a receipt showing I booked a fare in the Y cabin. When I get it as an instant upgrade, I don't.
No, my T+E dept does not recognize the quirks of CO's system. They see a fare class that has an A in it. They run that through the googler and they say "the jerk is violating our corporate travel policy" and it creates a headache for everyone. You can deny that all you want, but it's reality.

Ding.

I don't know that they'd know either, but if they spent an ounce of effort doing research (which they apparently do) then they would figure out that I followed the travel policy.

You can doubt all they want, but they do. I live in a pesky place called reality.

Thank you channa. That is the crux of the problem.

It does. I never had this issue in prior fiscal years when we were to book non-refundable tickets.

Another little (amusing) glitch of co.com mentioned in another thread.

Good to know. Thank you.

This is still an issue though, and one that I hope CO will address.

As mentioned, that's because you process the intstant upgrade prior to the receipt being generated (actually, you can upgrade the reservation before you even purchase the ticket). We gave you the easy solution to that -- print the receipt before processing the upgrade. But even after the upgrade, the fare class shown on the receipt should be listed as one of the upgrade classes. Historically "CU" (for Y-UPs) or "AN" (for B/M-UPs). Per this thread from CO Insider, those fare classes are now "FE" and "ZE" respectivly, and of course "R" for mileage upgrades or EUAs. And that's only if a new receipt is "requested" after the upgrade. If you just "view receipt" on CO.com for even past reservations, the original booking code will show.

None of my e-ticket receipts from CO actually say "Economy" or "First" anywhere, it's just the code. Print out the list in that thread for your T&E monkeys and you should have no problems going forward. :)

And yes, we realize CO isn't perfect at everything. But they do a pretty good job at a lot of things. The PDA website is great. Ability to book specific fare classes. You can even divide a PNR yourself on the website (I just noticed that one today!).

I'm well aware, which is why I keep giving them business.

I find CO to be one of the most responsive airlines when it comes to fixing quirks. This is a quirk that could, in my simple mind, be easily fixed.

The solution provided works going forward but think of the 99% of users out there that aren't aware of this.

The fix would be easy. We can specify fare class when searching for flights, right? Well, they just need an option to specify fare class when generating receipts. Problem solved!

Haha. ^

... yeah, I guess that would work.

That might be because there are more quirks to fix. ;)

These types of things are all basic tihngs the other guys figured out years ago. CO doesn't seem up to par with their systems and processes, so basic stuff like this needs to be pointed out to them.

You paid for X, your receipt should show X. That is common across every business you ever deal with. If Safeway throws in a free turkey with a $100 purchase, the receipt will document that. It's just common sense.

As for responsiveness, from when the checkin upgrade loophole was brought to their attention to when it was fixed was 4 years. Standby list sortation, 2 years.

I work in technology, and I would be more tolerant of some of their "old systems" excuses. But only if the other guys hadn't had this type of stuff in place for a decade or longer. CO didn't just start flying last year, after all.

One more quick thought on this --

The reason why I book refundable tickets is they generally change a handful of times. If I were to print out the receipt and then go back in and ask to be ugpraded, dollars to donuts, the receipt won't be accurate when it comes time to submit the T+E after the travel has occurred.

Once again, this wouldn't be a problem if CO just put the fare class booked on a receipt and not where they assigned it internally.

Reference: free turkey at Safeway example.

This is where a corporate TA comes in handy. They (1) keep track of the receipts, (2) don't generally process the upgrades anyway so you always get the "original" receipt, and (3) ensure that all bookings are within policy in the first place so the A/P folks don't have to worry about scrutinizing this stuff. My last employer didn't even require us to submit airfare receipts with our expense reports assuming the flight was booked by the corporate TA and charged to the corporate Amex. It was all taken care of behind the scenes.

Separately, I'm pretty sure that if I upgrade an AA flight at the time of booking (mileage) that the receipt would only show the upgraded COS.

We poop canned our corporate TA a couple years ago (and I work for a global multi-billion dollar company).

And, don't forget, it's not in CO's interest in push corporate travelers to TA's. Which is why they did things like 50% EQM's for non CO.com booked travel.

It is in their best interest to control the process as much as possible. In order to do this, they need a simplify process. If my company realizes that we aren't realizing cost savings from having individual travelers book their own travel within set limits then we'll go back to the old way and CO.com will have kicked this golden goose right out of the nest (I can think of several dozen CO elites in my company off the top of my head).

Yikes -- a global multi-billion dollar company that lets the inmates run the (travel) asylum?!? I hope you're not publicly traded! ;) Seriously -- who's making sure that you book the lowest available fare at the time of booking, instead of, say, buying up to M or B or Y to improve your chance of an upgrade? I'd have to think there could be semi-rampant abuse that would cost the company more in the long run than employing a corporate TA whose job it is to police such behavior.
Or are you just passing the costs directly along to clients?

The "TA is required to control costs" mindset has been starting to erode for a couple years now, and belynch's company seems to be an indication of that.

That's not to say there are no controls, but the controls are often on the back end via Travel Accounting flagging things that may look abnormal.

That's also not to say the company can't have negotiated rates with providers. That still happens. If the negotiated corp rate is $45 on a midsize car, and you submit $65, red flag.

It's not foolproof, but remember the TA charges $40 a ticket in service fees, and in most cases, they're no better than what one could find on their own (sometimes even worse). That's as much as a 40% premium on every cheap ticket (e.g., LAX-SFO RT for $100).

So without the TA, you're guaranteed to save $40 a trip, which can really add up across a large organization. If a handful of people abuse it, it's still probably cheaper this way.

Besides, the type of abuse you describe (buy up to Y/B/M to get the free upgrade) happen under a TA. Except people just wait to buy their tickets until only Y/B/M are available.

If you read my posts instead of just blindly disagreeing with me you'd understand that my corporate policy for my job function is to purchase refundable tickets. Someone, somewhere calculated that based on my travel volume and fluidity of my schedule -- and others in similar positions -- refundable is better. I'm not about to lose a great job over a few miles that are relatively meaningless to me and I know my colleagues feel the same way.

Next week I'm flying DL and --gasp-- US. Could I fly CO? Sure. But that isn't what works best for me next week. I'm the one that has to deal with the lunacy of the travel I book and it holds me accountable. I value sanity over upgrades every day of the week. Plus, I'm accountable for my own travel budget.

If I abused the very clear rules, and there is a team of people who look for :rolleyes:, I'll get called into the back room, as I was a couple weeks ago when I booked a B fare that showed as first. It took about 45 minutes of explaining away to get them to relent and the reason for this thread is to prevent more bad back room experiences. Just because, in your opinion, the fox is guarding the henhouse doesn't mean there isn't a farmer with a shotgun watching the fox. Or that the fox even likes chooks.

Ding. We dropped our corporate TA because they weren't negotiating better volume rates or providing exceptional service so their ROI for their service fees were non-existant, as determined my someone other than me.

I know, on more than one occasion, traveling during a snowstorm the 24 hour TA emergency helpline would just ring and ring and on the off chance someone would pick up they'd provide no help. Whilst calling the US1 or CO Plat line would yield far better results. And, I'd be the master of my own fate.

But this is getting way off topic.

Okie doke.

I tried what folks in this thread suggested and didn't tick the box for an upgrade during purchase. I went back in to do this on co.com and here's what I get:

Come on CO. Please stop making things this difficult. You're not the Fed.

By the way, when did an H fare return to being refundable? I can't make sense of this. :confused: