Blame Game: CO vs LX - OnePass: I Lose
 

What a mess! My partner and I booked the following itinerary using OP Mileage:

5/21: JFK/ZRH - LX F
5/22: ZRH/ATH - LX C
5/31: IST/ZRH - TK C
6/9: ZRH/JFK - LX F

I have a printed itinerary sent from CO with the above routing. I went online this morning to Co.com to work on some other bookings and noticed that this trip just had the IST/ZRH and ZRH JFK routings posted. Huh? What? Immediately called the Elite Desk to sort out the issue.

The first agent was somewhat helpful and identified the outbound segments were dropped by LX due to a scheduling change. Looked online (while speaking to the agent) at Swiss.com, no scheduling change to our flights -- all LX flights are as scheduled. Agent informs me that LX dropped the flights and he has to call to re-accommodate. Agent phones LX and they would not accommodate our original flights since the mileage allocation has already been depleted. Now the assertiveness factor kicked into high gear (catching a Med Cruise out of ATH) and the 'unacceptable' notice was verbalized. Elite Agent calls Swiss back and finds our two F seats out of JFK, but the connection is lost and we have to wait five hours in ZRH. He advised me to call LX directly. Did. LX wouldn't speak with me, and advised me this was a CO dilemma.

Called CO Elite Desk again and advised the agent our situation. Simply, "Please reinstate our ZRH/ATH flights." The agent was very unhelpful and borderline of being rude (I'm still assertive, professional but not aggressive) and I insisted speaking to a supervisor. 30 minutes later I'm still on hold and the agent replies that her supervisor spoke with LX. LX will only accommodate us on our original flight but only in Y. Do we wait in ZRH for five hours or take the seats in Y? Hhhmm. Hhhmm. Take the Y seats and I'll ask the agent for 'some' mileage back -- again, this is not our fault. I express my request and the agent informs me, "This is your fault for making a revision to your reservation." I express to her, that we revised the reservation once and if I remember correctly as a Plat changes to reservations are unlimited. Additionally, I asked her if she were in my shoes, how would she feel or act? No response.

Lessons Learned:

I'm pissed off.
CO has no recourse nor empowerment to resolve such situations.
CO likes to pass the blame -- this is the consumer's fault.
LX is useless and arrogant.
Buyer beware -- always check your reservations.

FYI:

We stuck with the five hour layover in ZRH.
Will ask for a sup at JFK tomorrow and present my case.
If I lose, will have lunch in ZRH.

-Jim

Wow, what a mess. Glad you got it fixed (sorta).


This is so true. CO Insider excepted, I don't think there's anyone else in the organization empowered to fix these sorts of predicaments. At least nobody who's accessible through the regular channels.


Always. Took you a while to figure this out, huh? ;)

Gotta love that award-winning "Rah! Rah! We're the best!" culture that breeds the sort of arrogance you received. I guess the "Working Together" culture that CO likes to tout doesn't apply to treating customers respectfully.


While that's how they came off, it's CO's reservation and CO's responsibility to fix.

nevermind

Unfortunately, this happens on other airlines as well. It's just a byproduct of a not-quite-perfect-integration of partner reward tickets and systems.

It really is hard to say who is to blame and thus who's responsible to fix the problem.

What I usually try and do to avoid this situations is make sure I have the ticket numbers for the final ticketed itinerary (that's often the reason for a partner canceling a segment -- they don't receive the ticket number from the issuing airline by some deadline) as well as the confirmation codes for the partner airline flights, if they are different. I then try to make sure the reservation looks OK on the partner airline's website, using either the ticket # (preferable) or confirmation code. I think that's all one can really do. If the partner just decides to cancel a segment, there's not much that can be done, certainly not by the reservation agents and even their supervisors.

Due Diligence - Complete
 

I have my ticket numbers and confirmation in hand (email and print). Seat assignments completed immediately after confirmation.

Didn't matter.:td:

Segments just dropped. Understand things happen, but the unwillingness to take the extra step to help.

Let's look if we can book you on LH via FRA, or, CO to ZRH/GVA and then on the LX connection. Nobody thought out of the box.

Jim,

First and foremost, do not fret. I had a similar situation on a CO award ticket for SQ flights were CO's SHARES and SQ's Kriscom simply stopped communicating with each other, such that SQ had no record of my booking. Made for an interesting experience at check-in at SIN. But, I made it onto the flight, and here's why you will make it on if you are polite but persistent:

An airline will honor a valid TICKET for one of its flights, even if there is no record of a *reservation* in the airline's computer system.

You have a valid ticket for Swiss flights. Therefore, Swiss must transport you on the flights and cabins booked. Print out your CO e-ticket receipts, and bring you Swiss confirmation code with you to the airport. When the agent does not see a reservation for you on the Swiss flights, give the agent your CO e-ticket numbers, as he or she can readily access the CO e-tickets, and will see there are open e-ticket coupons available for use for the specified Swiss flights. Since it sounds as if there's a live Swiss PNR for you, the Swiss check-in agent (or maybe the ticketing desk) can simply sell in First class seats - revenue seats - into your booking, and manually attach the CO ticket number.

The Swiss arrogant, nah, can't be possible. :p

Oh, and that money deposited by some strange dude with the German name in 1940 is our (the Swiss') money now, and don't you forget it.

And the little opps with our air traffic controller sending two planes to collide over the Bodensee, we passed that flight off to the Germans, yeah, that's right we passed it off, yeah, yeah that’s it.

Seriously you expect ethical or even customer aware treatment from the company that had no trouble shutting down one day, wiping out its customers frequently flyer accounts, its employees pensions, and all its legal and financial obligations...only to start anew the next day as: "Swiss International Airlines"

Not if the flight is full, they won't. I guess you could monitor availability on seatcounter or ExpertFlyer and show up to the airport early before they might give the seats to nonrevs or something.

I can say that I have noticed a severe downturn in the arrogance and unwillingness to change/work around/make it right for this Plat* by anyone at CO. And you can no longer even get an agent to "talk" to a supervisor for you, let alone talk to one yourself.

At the risk of being flamed because so many on here LOVE COinsider-I can say that even HE has been rather reclusive lately-and wont answer simple emails to resolve TOTAL BS PROBLEMS at co!






YES-this does happen. But no other airline does such a SH*TTY job of "service recovery" as CO. Sad to say, but I had booked UA flight on LH codeshare using US miles-something went wrong..way wrong. But US-as HORRIBLE as they are/were, made me whole. The agent was able to "pay" the higher amount of necessary miles from US, while only taking the saver amount-or something like that. Took about an hour, maybe more, but was RECOVERED well!

If they are denied boarding, they are entitled to compensation and rebooking.

Thats scary you would get so upset about a little messup in your reservation..Think of all the people in the world tonight that wont be eating,and your upset about this??? Reality check :(

Good point. CO should just cancel all your future bookings. In the grand scheme of things, it's no big deal.

I had something similar happen to me on a *A partner booking. I had used AC miles for a roundtrip ticket from LAX-JFK on UA over Thanksgiving. Originally I had booked in C, but then I had to change my times and only F seats were available. I had no problem on the outbound leg, but when trying to get on an earlier UA flight to LAX when checking in at JFK, the ticket agent informed me that I didn't have a F ticket according to my reservation and Air Canada had only booked me in business class, which was crazy because I had been on UA's website that day to check my seat assignment and they had me booked in F. I thought not a big deal and was ready to take the seat and fight for the miles back when I returned, but there were no available seats in C for the rest of the day. I brought up the reservation on my phone which had ticket numbers and everything, and he still wouldn't budge. I even tried calling Air Canada, but they couldn't see how UA would show it as a C ticket and he refused to speak to them (I was stuck as the middle man). Finally, I don't know if it was persistence or frustration, but after about 30 minutes of trying to convince him that I indeed had a seat on the plane (as I said, I was perfectly fine going back to C if they had had any seats to give me) he threw his hands up and handed me a F boarding pass for the earlier flight. I asked if he had figured it out, and he said no and didn't really explain further.

Basically after that, I learned to be judicious in changing my award itineraries for partner bookings (I had never had problems before even with my award booking last summer using NH miles on an itinerary that combined NZ, OS, and LH) and also VERY CAREFUL in making sure that I had all of the confirmation numbers and actual ticket numbers and to check the classes listed with each airline to make sure the codes match up (apparently the AC code for first is the UA code for business or something). Usually there is nothing to worry about when making a partner booking, but until they are all matched up on the same computing system and use identical codes, its important to pay attention and make sure nothing goes wrong.

Update
 

Love the ANA Tool. Still struggling with my outcome, so I started to search (again) on ANA and found the following available segments:

JFK/FRA - LH F
FRA/ATH - LH C

No five hour layover in ZRH and the JFK/FRA segment leaves at 9:40 P.M., better sleeping time versus the 6:00 P.M. LX departure. Called the CO Elite Desk to revise the itinerary, the agent can't find the FRA/ATH segment available and told me if I see it online to book it myself. Yeah right. On Co.com? Sure. :rolleyes:

Two minutes later call back again, new Elite agent sees the flight segments, grabs them, a little delay recalculating taxes and new confirmation is issued.

Boarding passes are in hand. Praying the volcano doesn't act up. In fact, 'Ash'ley helped me at the Elite Desk. Just kidding.

Have a good weekend everyone.

-Jim

Glad to hear it worked out.

Don't forget to check out the FCT if yo have time in FRA.