Joe747

I want to ask an simple-minded question and apologize in advance if the answer is obvious. But why is there all this discussion of some many seats in the X Y Z category, inventory of this or that. If I want to use miles to upgrade/get a ticket I figure out more or less what I want, call the Elite line and find out what they say is available and then make my decision. The assumption of all the traffic about this seems to be that you can somehow to better by doing all the work yourself. I thought the advantage of being an Elite was that they would do the work for you. Do you have any evidence/empirical data that you tried to get upgrades my way, were unsuccessful, and then were able to to it yourself? I must be missing something I but it seems to me to be in principle a waste of time to do things yourself that they can do for you.

Thanks in advance for your input. It may make me change my ways.

Joe

AndyTLe

If I understand your post correctly. Instead of wasting time on the phone checking flights to see availablility, there are (paid) tools out there that allows you to search for what you need. It isn't any different from booking online using Kayak or Orbitz rather than calling into Delta or a travel agent to book a flight.

jbcarioca

The value of all that, in my view anyway, is to know what flight to choose among multiple options, what routing to choose for multi-leg flights and therefore how to manage my bookings to minimize costs and maximize upgrade probability. It is a bit of work, but I find that using ExpertFlyer every time saves me about 20% on total fares and gets me upgraded almost every time.

For award travel these tools are very useful because you can choose dates and routes that already have the availability you need so don't have to depend on the telephone agents, who do not always have the skills or inclination to explore the options you want to consider.

It does take time, and it costs for the better tools also. It will save you money and improve your odds if you're willing to invest the time and effort. These techniques aren't for everyone. It helps to be obsessive, as the posts indicate many FTers are.

thepointsguy

The phone agents don't have the best tools either. More often than not, I have to convince them there is availability when I see it on Expertflyer or KVS. I feel like many phone agents start out exasperated (probably from dealing with angry award booking calls all day).

A coworker recently tried to redeem for a trip to Africa. The rep said that the absolute minimum for coach would be 150k to get to Amsterdam and then another 70k from there to get to Africa.

In about 20 minutes I pieced together an itinerary on DL/KL/KQ for 80k (low level).

mnredfox

This would be a huge area of improvement for DL to allow folks to search online (i.e. a working award calendar). Even better to allow partner searches as nwa.jp. It would be super useful and help relieve some of the call volumes, no?

I mean, does DL really think agents will get happier callers now that they have implemented the 3 city search rule? I got that crap from a sassy DL agent the other day say, sorry I can't help you anymore. Really, so I am just going to call back a little more irritated. How does that rule from mgmt help front line folks?

fti

I try to do as much as possible online first because I am totally dissatisfied with the PMS agents with regard to award travel. Twice I have been told that they can only check 3 options for my award travel. Incredible, but true.

So if I can get a handle on the award situation myself by going online first, I will do that. And once I was told on the phone that my traveling companions in the same PNR as me, with exact same travel dates, were going to be charged the $20/person phone fee (though I myself was exempt as a PM). That is SO untrue and so wrong. But I have given up fighting. (in the case of the $20/person charge, I just took all the flight info from the phone agent and booked segment by segment using the multi-segment option online).

I do call sometimes to ask about pieces of the puzzle. So when traveling to Alaska and I can't see award availability online for a certain AS flight, I call and DL can give me that info. Then I can often piece together a multi-city itinerary online with the info I found myself and the info obtained on the phone.

Is this time-consuming? Yes. Is this pretty stupid? Yes. But Delta makes it so difficult to do business BOTH online AND on the phone, even as a medallion, that you try to do the best you can with what you have.