Elite Desk... really?
 

I'm having trouble booking a ticket online, which for some reason does not price when I enter my billing address (outside of the US).

Called the Elite Desk (*G - 866-ELITE-CO), hoping to get some advice... The call was answered quickly by someone who spoke broken english, could not fully understand what I wanted and, after not getting a price for whatever reason simply hanged up the call :mad:

Tried to call back immediately after getting disconnected, just to be greeted by a 11 to 16 minutes waiting time!

Sorry for the rant, but on the various occasions that I had to deal with AA I was greeted with professionalism and by folks who actually speak english. On CO I just had bad experiences on the Elite Desk since I started flying with them (about 1 year). Is this *normal*, or I just have bad luck by getting routed to the crappiest agents every time?! Any tips on getting a decent service?

I've gotten non-native speakers the last few times as well. I was thinking maybe I got transferred to the wrong desk, but maybe we aren't dealing with native speakers as often anymore?

I just called (for something) and got transferred to an agent in 10 seconds.

Maybe the system didn't recognize your OnePass account number correctly?

After waiting over 10 minutes it turns out that the system had the wrong OnePass number - they could do like AA and read out loud the FF number to confirm. I did entered the FF# using the keyboard, but who knows what happened on the other end!

Nevertheless, it clearly seems like the US-based desk only opens after a certain time (10AM EST?) since after all the waiting I've got a native speaker agent. After inquiring about the long wait got the *excuse* of summer travel and lack of staff... still on the phone after some 30 minutes waiting for the fare construction to price at another currency other than dollar.

I had an issue like this a few weeks ago. If the Elite desk is overloaded, apparently you'll just get kicked over to the ICC.

To enter your number using the keypad, how do you enter the letters? Just the corresponding number? I was always thinking that might not be "unique" since there are multiple letters assigned to each digit.

Yes -- the letters would correspond to the digits. I always wondered about this but the system gets it right every time.

Infact, she greeted me by saying "Hello, Mr. _____. Thank you for calling Continental Airlines. How may I assist you today?"

That was a nice touch :).

Talk about being overloaded... Just spent over 2 hours on the phone to get a ticket issued. Long story short, the agent could not get the same price that I've got on their website, had me transferred to the folks who manage the website (clearly in some other country), them it was a loooong wait until they negotiated with ticketing to get the price right... All that because the website is/was refusing to price a ticket in a currency other than USD!

Glad its solved, not happy with the 2 hours spent on that :(

This is a known issue for many years - when the Elite Desk is full, you are automatically routed to the main call center.

When you ask a main call center agent if this is the 'Elite Desk', 9 out of 10 times they will lie and say yes...you need to spend enough time calling CO to get a feel for how the agents at the ED sound vs the general line and you'll know right away when you re-routed and can just ask to be transferred to the ED.

Most of the ED agents are older, female and will often announce the Elite Desk name when answering the phone. Their pronunciation is clear, concise and professional - no accents, mumbling, slang, "ummmms", etc. Remember how your 8th grade English teacher sounded, and that's an ED agent.

We've been asking CO for ages to add a feature to the call system giving us the choice to either hold for an ED agent or be transferred to the next available general reservations agent - but it never happened.

If what you enter could be more than one valid OP number (due to multiple letters on each key) you will be asked to enter your ZIP Code. Entering the ZIP Code narrows the possibility to one unique OP number.

The simple fix would be to recognize your phone number the way UA does. When you call UA and the phone number you're calling from matches the number on your account it will say, "Is this njcommodore, or someone calling on behalf of njcommodore? Please say yes or no."

much easier than keying in or speaking a membership number IMO.

This is good information, I had no idea - maybe it's one explanation for the couple dozen (elite) posters over the past few months discussing being stuck on hold for a long time, as opposed to the "it must be user error" mantra that's continually forced on them by some.

Have greatly enjoyed this feature for a long time - hoping it's not too much of a leap for CO to add it in going forward.

FYI you don't even have to say "yes", you can just key in "1" if you don't feel like talking :)

Can I press 1-1-2 for yes, reservations and no, I don't want to take your survey?

Of course - but survey is the 4th prompt, and I only get it every 5th call or so.

Q1 - "is this XXX or someone calling on behalf of XXX?" (1 yes, 2 no)
Q2 - something like "is this a new reservation, existing reservation, or something else?" (usually 2 for existing)
Q3 - "is this for domestic or int'l travel" (1 dom, 2 int'l)
Q4 (if you get it) - survey verbiage (quickly hit 2 for "no"!)

So basic response is 1-2-1, tacking on 2 if you get the survey prompt

Good to know. I usually shout it, now I just press the key hard!

thanks for the tip.