Over the past few days, co.com has been displaying standard business reward availability on DL flights where only the domestic connecting segments are available in F and the transoceanic segments are in coach.

Worst Experience Ever - cancelling a flight within 24 hours and not getting a refund
 

I had the worst experience ever booking a flight and cancelling it.

A while back Continental.com removed the ability to "hold" a reservation for 24 hours - now they let OnePass members (supposedly) cancel a reservation and get a refund after 24 hours.

While trying to do just that - get a refund after 4 hours - for a pretty expensive ticket ($2500 or so), the Continental.com Web site elected to cancel the flight (so far so good) but rather than refunding the purchase amount to instead "credit the value towards a future flight". Now that's great, I now got $2500 "credit" (and would have to pay a change fee).

Posting a note on Continental.com to Customer Care didn't help - 10 days passed and not a reply (I did check "please contact me").

Calling the reservation desk (Web support) yielded an agent who claimed I intentionally elected to receive "credit" versus a "refund" (like anyone would do this), and was not willing a refund. He did waive the change fee though (sweet but no cigar). Calling Customer Care yielded no results, with even less empathy from the agent ("it says here that you hit the cancel button instead of the refund button"). Now, I do recall being confused about those Web buttons, but that was back in 1996 or 1997, not recently :-)

So, you might expect Continental to treat 5-years-in-a-row OnePass Platinum customers like they could make a reservation, but I guess it's hard giving away $2500, admitting that there's some nasty bug on the Web site, or just being courteous.

The worst part is that as a Continental OnePass Platinum customer, it's not that I wouldn't normally spend $2500 at some point in the near future, but obviously now I'm stuck with a credit I can't even expense until I use it, and with a guaranteed mess once I try to re-book it.

I guess it's about time to start looking for airline programs which let you preserve your Platinum status when you move over.

Kudos, Continental.com folks - way to go!

12 Cst now deletes held reservation at 12 Est
 

I had to put 2 reservations on "pay with cash" hold for 24 hrs
yesterday
I wanted to use new credit card and was headed to the airport area so I needed that option as a backup.
As it turns I did not make it to the airport to pay for resevation
and was back at computer at 11:30 pm Est I entered the new credit card info
Went to complete the reservations at 12:10 EST and BEHOLD they had been deleted.
So is 12CST now 12EST? or just a new glitch.

Refunding a reservation within 24 hours works? Or not?
 

Beware when you make a reservation and consider cancelling it and requesting a refund. (A while back Continental.com removed the ability to "hold" a reservation for 24 hours - now they let OnePass members (supposedly) cancel a reservation and get a refund after 24 hours.)

I made a reservation and cancelled it after just 4 hours. A pretty expensive ticket too. Turns out that the Continental.com Web site elected to not refund the purchase but rather "credit the value towards a future flight".

Also turns out that calling the reservation desk (Web support) didn't help too - the agent claimed I intentionally elected to receive credit versus a refund (in reality: the option just wasn't there), and was not willing to give a refund.

And, posting a note on Continental.com to Customer Care didn't help - no reply at all. And the Customer Care desk wouldn't do anything about it, and weren't even nice about it.

Bottom line: watch out. I've been a Continental OnePass Platinum several years in a row, and would expected the folks to be nicer about what is seemingly a bug on their Web site. You may get stuck with a credit (just like I did), and figure out how to deal with your company about it.

Travel Bank Credits
 

Scott,
Is it possible for website team to add a link from the "My Account" page in the travel bank area to report a missing travel bank credit. This would seem to be an easy solution to a problem many people have and could be done in the same aspect as how people report not getting mile credit for a flight. PLus I would think it would decrease frustration and money spent fixing these problems.

co.com still is showing Standard Reward availability for certain partner flights where the domestic segments are in F but the overwater segments are in economy.

I can concur this. Some examples are 3/15/2008 DEL-CDG-EWR on AF.

A second example is 2/25/2008 EWR-ATL-DXB.

There's still some discrepancy in the catering information between the regular Continental.com site and the new PDA information site. For example, tomorrow I'm in F on CO 320, IAH-ATL. The regular site shows F getting a snack, which is always the salad/fruit bowl/bread meal on IAH-ATL (except at breakfast), but the PDA info site says "beverage service only." Not that it's anything major, but the two sites should agree.

bug in seat assignment and codeshare
 

continental.com seems to have problems with seat assignments when one segment of a trip is on a code share that does not allow seat assignments (in this case on American Eagle). When I booked the flight (a reward flight), I didn't get a seat assignment for the CO segment following the Eagle flight. On the web site I was unable to select a seat for the CO flight until after I called in and had reservations assign a seat for me. Even then, if I changed my seat assignment the web site got really confused and showed the seat associated with the wrong flight.

My elite earnings and balance is completely hosed up. I reported this a few weeks back - and it has gotton worst. Appears this occurred when they tried to run the Extra Mile Bonus (50%).

I get different balances depending on where I view.

Question and suggestion
 

Apologies if this is in this thread someplace, I didn't read the whole thing.

When I search BWI-DFW on 5/31-6/2, if I search by price, I get a lowest fare of $238, if I search by schedule I get a lowest fare of $332. That just doesn't seem right. Different fare classes show up for the same flights.

Also, on the advanced search, rather than just selecting a fare class, it would be much easier to be able to book the way NWA.com does it, where you can pick "M or higher," "L or higher," or whatever, from a pulldown menu. I actually have a flight where I might be able to use a Chase coupon (which are not valid on Fridays or Sundays..which is why I cancelled my World Mcard, waste of cash, but that's another story) and it would be much simpler to be able to search for flights that way.

737-900ER seatmap is not showing the additional emergency exit.

Seat Assignment After Upgrade
 

I've seen twice now that when I have received an Elite upgrade on a particular flight segment that seat assignments for flights after that segment on the same reservation disappear from the online reservation management page. In one instance, they were simply not shoing online but customer service still showed them on the reservation. This morning when I noticed it on another reservation, the seat assignment for the following segment was completely gone. The agent assigned my old seat to me, but it still does not show online.

[QUOTE=Mile-Hor;9269560]
When I search BWI-DFW on 5/31-6/2, if I search by price, I get a lowest fare of $238, if I search by schedule I get a lowest fare of $332. That just doesn't seem right. Different fare classes show up for the same flights.[QUOTE]


I've found that if you choose the flights, the price usually comes down on the recap page.

Occasionally, depending on where and how you bail out of a booking, you sometimes hold a seat (perhaps the last seat in a fare class) for several hours causing subsequent searches to return higher fares.

Mumbai is not listed in the Presidents Club location roster which also lists the BF accessible lounges.