FlyerTalk Forums - Name correction on ticket

I recently had an international ticket issued by the CO res center, and upgraded it using OnePass miles. When I got my fax confirmation, my last name was misspelled. (As a side note, I usually have domestic tickets issued in the name as it appears on my OnePass account. My first name is spelled differently on my OnePass account than on my passport, so I make it a point to have the ticket issued with that alternate form when traveling internationally. But I digress...)

Since I was using a OnePass award for the upgrade, I never actually had to spell my last name to the ticketing agent, as they pulled up my information from my OnePass profile. They must need to copy the data from one screen to another, and made a typo. No big deal - mistakes happen.

It's correcting the mistakes that is often the problem. When I first noticed the problem, I called CO res back, and they told me not to worry, as it was "close enough," and that they would note the problem on the PNR.

The next day, I was not satisfied with this response, for two reasons:

- Upon return to the US, the passenger manifest is uploaded from the airline to INS. Since there would be no passport that matched my name as on the passenger manifest, this would slightly delay my immigration clearance (As a side note, I've been cleared through US Immigration with as few as 3 keystrokes: the first two characters of my last name, and <enter>. And, the INS officer did NOT scan my passport using the optical scanner. The only way I can see this being possible is by advance upload of the passenger manifest. And, INS has publicly promoted this program as a way to speed immigration clearance).

- It's my understanding that for OnePass miles to post automatically, the last name and first initial on the ticket must match that of the OnePass account. Perhaps they use a Soundex algorithm on the last name, but maybe they don't.

In any event, the problem was definately on their side, and could have a couple of minor but annoying side effects for me, and I didn't see why they should not step up to bat and fix it, even if it took a little extra effort. Again, this was not a result of a miscommunication between me and the original res agent (which could have been caused by either party), but one that was clearly made by the res agent alone.

So, I took this as my first opportunity to use the 800-WECARE2 line. At first, they repeated the same line about the name being "close enough." However, when I brought up the INS issue with the passenger manifest matching, that got the ball rolling. They put me on hold, then when they came back, I listened to about a minute or two of constant typing, followed by "The name on your ticket's been changed. Would you like a new confirmation faxed to you?" I don't know if me providing an example of how this would inconvenience me, or if a desire on CO's part to comply with gov't regulations was what convinced them to act, but I was happy with the result.

Considering the amount of work it sounded like it took, I understand why they normally don't want to change the name on the passenger ticket to correct a typo. After all, they probably can't automate an algorithm to make sure the change is "close enough" to constitute a correction rather than a change of the actual passenger, so the agent probably has to go through an approval process and heavily document what they did.