Continental.com Master Thread [Report Ideas & Problems Here]
 

Hi Everyone,

Since our old continental.com sticky was in need of a refresh, I’d like to start a new one. In this new thread, I’d also like to include things that you’d really like to see on continental.com. I’ve started this “Wishlist” off with a few suggestions I’ve seen posted here on FT over the past few months. As always, I’ll do my best to edit the items in this post and update the status whenever I can.

Also, I'm pleased to report that our continental.com preview site is coming soon, and I’d like to formally invite our FlyerTalk community to participate. This is something we know you’ve been asking for, and this summer we’re going to make it happen. Participation will be limited to registered OnePass accounts. To register, just send an email to [email protected] with your FlyerTalk handle, OnePass number and your primary email address (if different). Once you’re registered, we’ll email you a preview invitation and link every time the pre-production version of our site is launched.

Below are the master lists (last updated 20-Mar 2007):

Wishlist (New Features You'd Like To See)

• Add more OnePass/SkyTeam partners to reward availability
• Add ability to book stopover rewards
• Add ability to book BusinessFirst mileage upgrades
• Add ability to make flight changes without a fee during irregular operations (like severe weather)
• Add ability for Northwest Elites to confirm an instant Elite upgrade when booking a full fare (Y class) ticket
• Add BusinessFirst and SkyTeam Elite Plus lounges to Presidents Club Locations section
• Overhaul online mileage reward charts
• Within the Flight Status function, add high-level flight status information to the search-by-schedule results (instead of having to select individual flights)
• List the Audio Video On-Demand (AVOD) movies and audio sections to the Inflight Entertainment section

Items To Be Addressed (Existing Features You Wish Worked)

• Reward seats on partner/interline itineraries sometimes show as available when there are no longer any seats left
• EWR-HKG does not show available in BusinessFirst when requesting "lowest refundable" fare for the First/BusinessFirst cabin
• Availability for some international-international connections sometimes incorrectly returns a “no available flights” results when the search request times out
• Unable to redeem $99 companion certificates
• Reward calendar intermittently shows the wrong corresponding color for a date
• Sometimes trying to add a new traveler results in an error saying the traveler is already in your profile
• Unable to apply gift certificate or electronic travel certificate funds toward a reserved itinerary

• Intermittent issues with retrieving reservations (e.g. returns a "unable to view latest information for this itinerary" error
• When upgrading an existing reservation using miles for a multi-segment itinerary, sometimes the upgrade doesn't process for all eligible segments
• Itinerary price sometimes not displayed correctly for reward reservations that are put on hold
• Same-day roundtrips are labeled incorrectly in the summary view in My Reservations (e.g. from San Antonio to San Antonio)
• Bookings sometimes get moved to the “Past” section after first part of the itinerary is flown, even though there are still future date segments in the reservation
• Unable to divide multi-party reservations
• Unable to assign different names to reservations that have been divided
• Trying to reissue a ticket or make a flight change sometimes results in an error
• Cancelling an unticketed itinerary results in an erroneous message (and email) stating that the ticket value is valid for the future
• Johannesburg (JNB) is not recognized on itineraries (shows as blank) and subsequently all flight durations to/from JNB are miscalculated
• Some reward classes of service on flights operated by partners are showing as “Economy Class” when it should be “Business Class” (e.g. O class on Air France)
• Flights operated by other carriers that aren’t OnePass partners show mileage amounts and Elite qualification percentages in the “OnePass Miles/
  Elite Qualification” column
• When accepting a schedule change, the original flight and the new flight are displayed as a connection with a calculated connection time (e.g. 0 minutes)
• Not all information is retained for cancelled itineraries (e.g. date created, etc)

• Unable to select seats for the individual legs of a multi-stop flight (e.g. IAH-GRU-GIG)
• Seats assigned online for multiple parties are sometimes getting transposed on the receipt confirmation

• Error message sometimes states that Continental doesn't fly to the requested airport (occurs when the request times out behind the scenes)
• Flight status notification request returns an error when using pda.continental.com
• TripAlert for on-time status does not include the scheduled departure time
• TripAlerts sent in HTML format instead of text
• EUA notification e-mail sometimes labels “F” class as “BusinessFirst” instead of “First Class”

• EliteAccess and OnePass number sometimes not reflected correctly on boarding passes for reward tickets (occurs with Online, Kiosk and Curbside)

• ”Remember Me” doesn't work with Internet Explorer 7
• Menu bar doesn’t display correctly when viewed in 1920x1200 resolution

• Content and link errors on the Israel site (link to Kosher chef page and menus are missing, Israel RewardOne chart reverts to U.S. version)
• Toll free number listed for Duty Free is valid in the U.S. only, not the U.S. and Canada

My private CO jet really needs washing. When do you guys come do that? Or do it need to bring it in? :p

I am flying MAN-EWR-MCO in the morning that was EUA'd at the 4 day out mark for EWR-MCO. It was purchased as a Q class ticket (Unrelated, but is it just me or why do I only ever get Q class options).

Looking at the current itinerary "My Account" is showing the flight as earning 0 EQMs and 938 OP miles.....

My Question is: Why is Q class showing 0 EQMs? (FYI it currently displays "F" class (Not AU) since I was EUAd)

This is like the oldest problem with this website. I first saw it a year ago or so. You should be OK with the EQM's (as long as you bought in on continental.com).

It boggles the mind that CO can't fix a problem that has festered for so long. Damnation! I spoke to continental.com support today about something else, and they are blase about the problems they have. "Websites have problems" is what she said (or something to that effect). The fact that--unlike with Continental--web problems are not "sticky" under every airline on this website is an good indicator that Continental's is worse than most.

50% of the time I sign into my account, it crashes and pops me to an error screen. This is such a simple transaction. WHAT IS THE DEAL???

Review of upgrade wait list
 

You still can't review a PNR that you have wait listed for upgrade to BF.

The only way to view is to look at your receipt and hope your selected seats arn't changed for the worse.

How many other airline web sites have you used? Continental's is much better than any of the others that I have used. I would counter your argument by reminding you of the fact that Continental has a representative here and that they are actually interested in solving web site problems and in soliciting feedback. I don't see any other airlines doing that.

Reward Seat Assignments on Partner Flights
 

I have booked OnePass reward travel with partner flights. I called the partner to change seat assignments, but CO.com is still showing the original seat assignments on the partner legs (including 31D on an AS MD-80, UGH!), even more than a week after contacting the partner to change the seats. I have no confirmation from CO.com of the new seat assignments.

Invalid Class of Service
 

This is still an issue:

I tried to price a ticket EWR --> TXL and got the error using these classes:

A, C, D, R, J, Z
K, N, B, O, V, U, M, H, Y

But not these:
A, C, D, J, Z
K, N, B, O, V, U, H, Y

Help has been fixed, as it shows M and R as valid classes.

Connection Time Missing for Changed Flight
 

Was worried about a CLE-EWR-LGW connection and changed from the Wed 3p CO1567 to Wed 11:30a CO224 by calling the Elite line.

Now, when viewing itin on co.com via manage reservations page, there is no longer a statement like the following in between the changed flight and the next leg (EWR-LGW):

Change Planes. Connect time in New York/Newark, NJ (EWR - Liberty) is 5 hr 47 mn.

Minor issue, but figured I would report it. Interestingly enough, the new connection time in between the flight *prior* to the changed flight and the changed flight is recalculated correctly and is displaying fine.

This was odd...Logged in to CO.COM tonight and it complained my password/account login was invalid, even though I have autofill on for the entry boxes. I logged in again and it then worked, but it gave me a screen describing the OP account rules and a continue button. Selecting continue it showed my current account properly except it displayed that I have 0 OP miles, but Activity since my last statement properly displayed the 20k in miles I earned over the past 1.5 weeks.

I logged out and then back in then it was displaying the 500+k of miles I have and everything was back to normal.

Very Strange.

Depature Managment Information via co.com?
 

Scott,

As always thanks for thinking of us. :)

One thing we have all seen and heard first hand are the stream of questions asked of a GA when they are preparing for a flight (i.e. where am I on the upgrade list, where am I on the standby list, is there a meal, are we on time, am I in a window seat, etc.) While a SLC DL-esq solution with monitors at every gate answering these questions would be nice, could co.com be updated so that OnePass members could have access to this information when logged on?

For example when I have checked in for a trip rather than having the homepage of co.com load with an 'upcoming trips' box, why not feature a 'information on my current trip' (I assume that one is logged on to their account to see this information). Passengers could confirm their relative position on the various standby lists, see what movie(s) (if any) will be shown, review the seatmap, volunteer for a bump (if applicable), check the status of the flight, check the status of the weather at the destination - and so on.

The fact that CO feels compelled to send a managing director to this forum to try to guide the lightning bolts simply reinforces my argument that they have intractable problems. It's a great PR move...it even gets moderators all starry-eyed. Wow, you even forgot about the problems! I guess it worked. Next time you speak time him, please ask him to answer the private email I sent him about the web problems. These problems have wasted entirely too much of my time this week.

As for other websites, do you honestly think I've not used other airlines' websites?

By the way, is the moderator supposed to moderate or inject his opinion into the postings?

Popping you to an error screen when you correctly enter your PIN is something I've experienced for months. This is such a stupid problem. I wish to heaven they would fix it.

Change flights feature request (and possible bug)
 

It would be nice if the change flights search results displayed the price (or delta price) or at least the fare class.

In the event you select multiple segments to change, but end up with one or more the same as the original flights, the fare is repriced anyway based on currently available buckets. I would think co.com could leave the segment alone in this case and not force the user to go back and start over and deselect the segment.

I have a reservation I just made though my corp agent with a full Y fare and did the 'upgrade' option on co.com. The res also has a united leg on it and the upgrade never completed. I called the elite line and she finished it, but now I can't pull up the itinerary at all online.

I came here to report the exact same problem. co.com support was able to give me a seat assignment but couldn't fix the reservation so I could access it online.

I'm going to PM coinsider with my pnr.

Update: it seems to be fixed.

Why is reward availability often worse when logged in as a plat elite vs not logged in at all?

I'm trying to find standard BF rewards from IAH-BRS this July and I see more availability and options when logged out than I do when I'm logged in. Additionally the same thing seemed to happen when I called reservations.

Surely the whole idea behind more reward availability for plat elites is that the standard reward buckets are a subset of the plat reward buckets, not the other way around. Shouldn't availability in 'EN' always be >= availability in 'E' ?

Thanks

The CheckIn button for flights appears before one can actually checkin for the flight.

The button shows up exactly 24 hours before scheduled departure (pretty much to the second.) However, checkin, either with the button or by entering the PNR manually, does not work until about 1-3 minutes later. During this time I get an error message about having an invalid reservation/eticket (something like that).

I assume this has something to do with the EUAs being processed.

Hi,
I wanted to redeme miles for a JUly trip to LA. No seats available.. Would I have to book during an earthquake to get an available seat to LA?
First post to flyertalk.

Split record priced in usd?
 

My wife and daughter (both silvers) were in the same PNR last week CRP - MBJ. Outbound at CRP they split the record to make wife my platinum companion to move her up the upgrade priority list.

Mid-trip, my daughter decided she wanted to return with me 2 days earlier than my wife.

I logged on to co.com using her one pass number and found the reservation and tried to change it and it failed with the ever-popular continental.com cannot complete… message.

After a nightmare trying to get hold of anyone with CO (see this thread), I finally got co.com support and was told she’d have to call the rates desk because my ticket was not un US dollars.

This resulted in a 15+ minute call at international mobile rates ($2.00/minute).. they got it worked out for the $100 change fee but it was a real pain.

Bottom line: Did the agent corrupt pricing on the split reservation and why couldn’t I do the change online. I suspect they are related.

Preserving premium seats
 

Not sure this is so much a co.com wish but an overall seat assignment software/policy change:

See this flyertalk thread that discusses the fact that at the airport, non-elites without pre-assigned seats are consistently seated in the elite seats before the seats further back. The system should block middle seats in the elite section until all other seats are filled. For that matter, it might ought to block all the elite seats until ALL the non elite seats are filled.

-- your snobby elite friend.

I think allot of us agree on that, especially for Intl Flights.

Is it too early for me to start a Dear Santa Claus thread?

Welcome to CO's Neverland, called the West Coast. You'll have to pay double the miles with the EasyPass ticket.

Welcome to FT, dgiggles.

If CO does not have space, be sure to check their partners (Northwest, Delta and Alaska). Remember, on an award ticket you can use pretty much any combination of partners to get from here to there. If you want more information you may want to try searching or posting your specific question on a new thread.

flights missing from search while eua running?
 

An observation, I suppose...

Heading to the airport early today, I tried to change my ticket online (full Y). The flight I was looking to change to (which had availability, including y-up according to flyaow/classamex...) didn't show up. I tried searching various ways then called the elite desk. They said it was full up front & had 6 seats in the back. Checked again - flight showed up as stated. This was just before the 3 hour mark. I'm guessing that the records are totally locked (including coach seats) while EUA is actually running, therefore preventing potential customers from seeing availability on the flight.

Dk if just me, but after OLCI and a seat change, the "view reservation" shows the old seat, not the one I picked during OLCI.

co-insider: same PNR I sent you Friday.

Also: didn't print BP. When I arrived at the airport, the kiosk wouldn't print - said, "special handing required." The agent just printed it - no handling that I was aware of (and before anyone jumps in, no SSSS, either).

Thought this was reported or fixed already...but its back
 

This weeks itinerary has me flying...

CLE-EWR-SAV this morning
SAV-EWR-MKE tomorrow morning
MKE-CLE Wednesday night

Did OLCI yesterday without an issue at the 24 hour mark, even got the email which I haven't seen in a while.

This morning while connecting in EWR I swung by the PC for an email check. I had now received my OLCI email notice for Tuesday mornings flight.

I attempted OLCI (even though I was mid itinerary on CLE-EWR-SAV) and CO.COM started the OLCI but then errored out reporting there was a problem with my itinerary.

Mileage Calculator versus Actual OP Statements
 

Maybe this is easily explained, but I cant seem to figure it out.

I am looking over my years OP statements and a few entries stick out like a sore thumb. Examples cut/pasted directly from my online Acct:

1/26/2007 COEX 2276U LGA-CLE W/U 500 522 1,022 500 1
1/29/2007 COEX 2867 CLE-BDL Y/Y 500 593 1,093 750 2
2/8/2007 COEX 2464U BDL-CLE U/U 500 593 1,093 500 1

From what I see above the 125% PE bonus was not calculated properly. I received 593 miles in bonus for BDL-CLE but the mileage calculator says I should receive 625 miles (500 base miles * 125%, ). Why does the mileage calculator differ from the actual bonus miles I received? For the other 95% of flights I have taken the 125% PE bonus is caclulated properly and the mileage calculator reports the same information.

Is this a problem with the WWW site that requires me to have my OP acct credited miles? Or did I simply miss something (it seems too obvious so I must be making a mistake somewhere)?
Anyways which is incorrect the mileage calculator or the OP statement?


Any information is appreciated,
CLEHillbilly

pda.continental.com - issues with wm5 smartphone
 

Intermittent - usually either can't log in (bad pin) or if I do log in, whatever I click takes me back to the login page whereupon I get another bad pin error.

This is on a T-Mobile Dash.

Note: works fine on my Blackberry.

Reward searches on Alaska Airlines
 

Apparent bug:

co.com does not properly understand the airport code for some of Alaska's destinations when performing a reward search. For instance, if one enters "OTZ", you get the standard "not served by Continental or a parter codeshare" message. Yet if you type "Kotzebue", it works correctly.

There are a number of other destinations with the same problem, including Kodiak, Unalaska (Dutch Harbor), and Barrow. With Barrow, I can't get anything at all, because it refuses the airport code (BRW) and then asks for clarification if you use "Barrow", leading to a loop of "more than one airport matches your search" messages.

Basically, all of them that I saw are unusual Alaska destinations way up north; but I didn't sit there and enter all of Alaska's destinations. You're gonna have to send me a bunch of drink vouchers for me to do that.


----

Founding member, Continental Airlines uncompensated website debug team.

Extremely minor bug with online check-in
 

You can push this one down to the bottom of the stack in terms of priority, but I thought I would report it anyway. When you go to checkin online, if you checkin *exactly in the minute* at the 24 hour mark, you get the (incorrect) error message

For example, if your flight is at 12:35pm, and you start the checkin process between 12:35:00pm and 12:35:59pm the day before, you receive the error message above instead of the normal error

However, if you wait until 12:36:00pm, checkin can proceed as normal. I suspect that the discrepancy is due to a coding bug - the web script is probably using "less than or equal to 24 hours" while something in the background is using "less than 24 hours".

Anyway, feel free to ignore this one. The only impact is the slightly scary error message. As you can tell, I'm a bit obsessive about checking in first (I've snagged many an upgrade that way). :)

Can anyone comment on this?

The website is inconsistent (i.e., the mileage calculator isn't correct). If you look at the elite status mileage bonus terms (link), you'll see this:
I know because last year I called the OPSC with the same question.

Can't access PC info while logged in
 

Ok - it's an odd one, but I went to see if there was a PC at PHL (sadly, there isn't)...

While logged in to co.com, I received:

message when I selected "president's club" from the pull-down menu. This occurred from the main page, my account page, etc. Logged out, got to the page. Logged in, got an error.

If it matters, this was using Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Windows XP Pro SP2.

Trip Alert stopped e-mailing me
 

I did not receive an e-mail telling me I could check in for either leg of my flight this week, nor have I received any trip alerts telling me the gate and flight status.

I logged in to continental.com and it did show that I was set up to receive the e-mails at the correct address. They're not in the spam filter, either.

I tried setting up a phone call in trip alert and ran into problems. If I select a phone number and click Edit, it brings me to the page to enter a new phone number. If you fill in the blanks and hit save, it does not save. If you follow the link to add a new phone number and fill out the form and hit save, it does not save and it takes you to a page with a link to create a new primary phone number. (Hope that one made sense).

Firefox 2.00.3, Windows XP.

UPDATE: Got Trip Alert and online check-in e-mails for Sunday's flight - the new PDA friendly version of co.com was much appreciated. The days I did not get any e-mails were Wednesday/Thursday/Friday.

reward problem
 

in the infamous words of Emily Letelia......NEVER MIND....I am stupid and must learn to read more carefully ALL of the words...not just a select few....

ITTIA

Is it really exactly 1 minute? I guess if the internal systems don't use seconds then your explanation makes more sense than my guess earlier in this thread of EUA processing: http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....4&postcount=18
If true it'd be easy to fix the Manage Reservations page so that the checkin button is delayed by a minute.

Talk about false advertising: 24 hours before the flight. I feel wronged. All those stressful seconds thinking my reservation was invalid. :D

Kudos that TripAlert email settings now allow three email addresses. This is great for e.g. me, my cell, wife to keep maximally informed.

Alas, OnePass Elite Upgrade Notification email settings do not use this new code, only one address is allowed.

I had created a special email account just to receive CO.com email, that forwarded copies to my cell and my regular email account. I started getting far more spam from Spain (one group there managed to guess the account name by blanketing my provider with guesses) than upgrade notices. After going to the trouble of changing that email address to one that is unguessable and very long, I noticed the improvements to TripAlerts but not EAU email.

Some people would find what I had to do beyond their technical reach. It would be very handy to allow multiple addresses for EAU emails, too.

Another solution would be to send me more upgrade notices. :)

Two situations which caused this message on "Viewing" an exising reservation:

"We were unable to review the latest information for this itinerary."

Calling co.com is no help - it is not a sync issue and the process they have to do a manual fix - does not work.

This has occurred two times in the last two days:

1. EUA occurred for flight this Friday - got the above message and could not View reservation to change seat assignment. co.com tech support could not fix. Also - did not get the normal EUA text message even though co.com says it was sent.

2. For upcoming flights in July - went to view and got the message - one of your flights had changed (by 2 minutes with no change of aircraft type or seat map arrangement). I accepted the change then the above message about not being able to view reservation occurred. Called co.com and they could not fixed. To make matters worst - the seat assignments for all passengers were lost for the return flight from ANC - not going to have too many happen flyers. co.com agent able to re-assign seats - but then I still can not view the reservation and the co.com agent can not fix.

This is a MAJOR BUG and NEEDS fixed ASAP. I can not understand why such major problems are starting to occur. There are no productivity gains, in my view, to the changes which were made to co.com several months ago - other than the faster calendar pop up.

50% Elite Miles for Flights booked on CO.com
 

It started last year when I was trying to book flights on the Gov./Mil. site. They had a problem with the payment module, so I had to call the reservations desk. Twice I was assured that there was no problem, they were aware of the situation in the Gov./Mil payment page, and that I would receive full elite miles (for an S fare). Never happened.

This year I booked a flight for my family through CO.com in T fare. Never spoke to reservations -- again, 50% elite credit. Another trip on the gov./mil. site, flown last week, totally without talking to a live person and again 50% credit (again on an S fare).

As far as I can see, they have not removed the "bonus" for booking on line.

I called several times and was told this would be fixed. They would have to pull up the microfiche for the older flights, but the newer ones should be no problem, I was told. Nothing happened. :mad:

They get one more try and then I'm going over to NWA.com.

Thoughts? Similar experiences?