oliver2002

Dear fellow Flyertalkers,

please join us in welcoming the Etihad Airways representatives in our forum.

EtihadHelp will be presence on FT for your questions about Etihad Airways (EY) and their FFP Etihad Guest.

We are very happy that after working together for a while that this project is ready for take off. EY recognises that FTers have intricate knowledge of their product and feedback received from this forum is taken seriously.

Note that EY has high expectations on their social media team, they want to hear what you have to say and identify what is going wrong. The team has some stringent SLAs, which include a fast response time.

A few housekeeping rules:

• Please do not to respond to queries posted by others directed at EtihadHelp
• This thread is flame free, so there are no stupid questions, but only let EtihadHelp answer
• EtihadHelp will primarily focus on this thread alone, so if you want to attract their attention to a hot topic, please feel free to post a pointer in this thread
• If a certain topic evolves into a discussion, please alert the mods so we can split off the discussion into a separate thread
• EtihadHelp are regular members of FT, so off topic comments about them, post stalking etc etc will be dealt with as per the FT TOS.

So let the games begin!

Best regards,

The FT Senior Moderators

EtihadHelp

Dear FlyerTalk members,

We have listened to your feedback and opened a new thread for ‘Etihad Airways | Etihad Guest’ to provide you with one-to-one communication and service. We will still be monitoring other threads but will keep this as our main home to respond to you. If you need any assistance or answers to enquiries, you can find us here.

You may already be familiar with individuals from our Online Community Management Team, who will be posting here as EtihadHelp.

Our team are ready to support you in several languages. English and Arabic team members are available 24/7 and German, Italian and Chinese language team members are available Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm (X GMT).

Our aim is to respond to your enquiries as quickly as possible and we will work to provide answers within 24 to 48 hours.

We look forward to communicating with you but would like to remind you that in cases where you would need to share personal information for us to assist you, all personal information should be communicated via DM or using our dedicated email address: [email protected] to protect your privacy.
(Note: Personal Information includes but is not limited to: your email address, booking reference or ticket number and Etihad Guest Number)

We look forward to hearing from you!
_________________
EtihadHelp

irishguy28

Can I just ask - what is EtihadHelp's expectation of how their "service" is supposed to operate? What can they actually do to help FT'ers? To date, all they can seem to do is direct us to email someone else. Or they say they will get in touch with "the Etihad Guest team". Or they say they will get in touch "with the baggage team". And the threads then show that nothing came from these attempts. (Did the attempts succeed? Did EtihadHelp not bother? Or does the rest of Etihad simply ignore EtihadHelp, too?)

Given that 99% of their posts so far have contained the request to contact them at [email protected], what exactly is their presence on here supposed to achieve?

In other words, if EtihadHelp is here only to direct people to the [email protected] address, why even bother interacting here? People will quickly learn that there is no point posting here - and should instead contact [email protected] directly.

I think that if EtihadHelp had taken the time to understand how the few other airlines with official representatives on FlyerTalk operate, they would have come up with (probably) a more useful, meaningful offer for the FlyerTalk community.

I sincerely hope that Etihad is listening and taking this on board - I always get the feeling that staff I voice complaints or frustrations to just act apologetic and subservient, but do absolutely nothing about the situation - whether this is due to lack of empowerment, or just an airline policy of attempted mollification is unclear - but Etihad's image has suffered hugely in my eyes in the last year.

Etihad is a great airline when things are going to plan. But any contact with Etihad Guest or Etihad Customer Service is the most spirit-sapping, time-wasting and frustrating experience.

EtihadHelp - please tell us that you are aware that Etihad falls behind all other airlines in these regards. And that you are willing and able to turn around these perceptions that you have helped to propagate here on FT with the "spambot" postings you have been making to date.

It would help if there was one dedicated official lurker assigned to the EtihadHelp account - rather than the team that has been the case up to now. Some threads contain the ridiculous sight of several, almost identical posts from different people, all under the EtihadHelp guise. ("We are sorry. Contact [email protected]"). And, in many cases, the information provided (where any info has been offered) has been incorrect, or ambiguous/misleading. Please - assign someone competent and empowered to this task. It does not fill me with confidence when we get posts along the lines of "we will try to contact our baggage team in Madras again for you" meaning that it seems not even internally are these people taken seriously.

EtihadHelp

Hi irishguy28, thanks for your post.

We’ve setup this new thread to address some of the concerns that you and other FT’ers have raised. Our goal is to answer questions and queries as efficiently as possible and to provide responses back here on this thread as long as they don’t contain private information.
We will respond to all of our FT’ers and may not always have the answer immediately but we will ensure we follow up within 24 to 48 hours.

As we are a 24/7 team we are unable to assign just one person to reply to all concerns, however each of our team members are able to answer all questions or concerns effectively.

Thanks, *CB

irishguy28

If this is how all of Etihad operates - and it seems so - then it is no surprise that the apparent culture of not taking ownership of the problem, and not driving through any single issue right through to its completion, has sprung up and taken hold.

If each subsequent contact is dealt with by a different person, then no single individual really needs to do anything. If they can't (or won't) solve the problem, it won't land back on their desk - it will land on someone else's desk, assuming the passenger doesn't give up in despair. And, as things stand, it seems that your staff barely bothers to read and understand the latest communication, let alone trying to understand the progression of the problem from the start. [I realise that customer complaints can be long-winded and badly-written, but I have had some absolutely basic queries misunderstood, misinterpreted, or simply ignored]

I truly hope that you will pass this message up to your superiors - Etihad's customer service department no longer even gives the appearance of providing a useful service. When even the Etihad Premium twitter handle cannot answer basic questions (such as my earlier query of what my new, extended Gold expiry date was after requalification; they could only come back with my current expiry date) or cannot decipher the pertinent details of a complaint (after a long-running 5+ month battle, someone ended my retro-credit query by telling me the miles had posted - and pointed at the miles from a transaction that was NOT the subject of the query) or merely stop replying, I cannot see the point in this charade here on FT.

Something fundamental needs to happen in-house. Like taking individual ownership of a problem; rather than merely passing the buck.

I realise that no-one likes being told that they are doing a bad job; but I am afraid that that is all too often what is emanating from your department.

SeeBuyFly

A change has been made in response to the complaints. Rather than rehash the complaints immediately, let's give them a chance and see.

I recognize that the change merely prevents EtihadHelp from stalking every thread with their boilerplate; it does not necessarily improve their dismal success rate in actually solving problems and addressing the complaints. However, maybe the new system will allow them to get a higher percentage of results in a smaller number of cases.

The change to a single thread will also allow the complaints to be collected in one place and thus make any continuing pattern of failure to deliver results more visible.

I suggest using this thread for complaints, and not (at least for now) to complain about how they handle complaints.

irishguy28

The only complaints that matter are the ones being ineffectually dealt with in AUH.

I don't see that anything at all has changed in that department. If something had, I am sure we would have had a more sweeping statement made, rather than this new mere housekeeping arrangement.

They've just confirmed above in post #4 that it is not the "one-to-one" service promised in post #2. It will still be the cast of motley characters logging in sporadically and probably doing nothing more than what has been done up to now.

h1ghfly3r

I think this thread is a great new opportunity for EtihadHelp to prove that they really want to improve something. Let's give them a second chance. It is a step into the right direction and they deserved it.

Personally would I like to see one or two designated EY staff who ate responsible for FT. Even if they are not available 24/7 and in 10 different languages. But maybe that is just my opinion.

NoY

I agree. Ownership is the key. Providing multiple multi-lingual staff would just add to the chaos. Keep it simple please Etihad.

grannieflyer

Its just great to see this sticky/thread. Crikey, have I had problems (ongoing) with Etihad Help service regarding paperwork, missing miles and missing gold - or should it be a Platinum card now? Also missing quadruple miles, that I was clearly signed up for.

Its so sad, Etihad are great 'in the air', they provide a truly 'first class experience', but when it comes to customer service on the ground, they fail in every area.

EtihadHelp

Hi grannieflyer, please DM us your Etihad Guest account and booking reference if you wish us to help you to chase up your missing miles. Thank you! *ZD

Flauschie_Mr

Then I take the opportunity to ask two questions I could not find an answer to.

Question 1: Is there (and if so, where can I find it) a table the gives specific information about Tier Miles when flying on Eithad partner airlines?


I’m asking since one gets for an economy class flight 1 tier mile for every 1 mile flown regardless of the economy booking class. At least this is what I got credited into my account (hope this is correct, otherwise I just shot myself in the foot with this post ).

In case of Air Berlin for example the Etihad website states:
Flights taken on airberlin and NIKI are eligible to earn Etihad Guest Tier Miles and therefore do contribute to earning or maintaining your Etihad Guest Silver, Gold or Platinum.

Flights taken on airberlin are eligible to earn Etihad Guest Tier Miles and therefore contribute to earning or maintaining your Etihad Guest Tier status.



Question 2: Is one eligible to earn 1 tier miles for every 1 miles flown with AB as well regardless of the booking class, given the flight has an AB flight number and is operated by AB?

EtihadHelp

Dear Flauschie_Mr,

Thanks for contacting us, let us look into this for you We will get back to you soon with the answers to your questions. We will speak soon, thanks *GW

SeeBuyFly

This is the problem that people are complaining about. Grannieflyer has already provided you with the relevant details, I believe multiple times. Since there is no dedicated user of the Etihadhelp account, but rather any staff member who is available will "post and run", the result is to get this constant stream of "please DM us your details" boilerplate over and over. It is past time for this to stop; it does not constitute customer service, it is customer harassment.

EtihadHelp

Dear SeeBuyFly,

As we can see from the previous conversation with Grannieflyer. Both the missing miles and the Bonus miles have been credited to account.

All the issues raised here will be well addressed to the dedicated team for further action. We believe that we are making change happen. *JS