jimbo99

Went into the London office today to book an award ticket from London to Saigon in Premium Laurel Class. The guide says that such a ticket should cost 135,000 miles (Europe to Asia).

So, first off "Oh you have to buy two separate tickets" (which would cost more). Nothing more annoying than staff that do not know their own FF programme and are confident about it too. Well I asked her to "check". She phones a colleague and tells me again that I need to get two separate tickets.

I put that annoyance on hold and ask her to check availability. The date I want is not available, neither is the next, neither is the next. I ask her to keep trying - and this seems to aggravate her. In the end we give up.

I then ask her to check Elite availability for "paid for" tickets. Similar problems. Gold card makes no difference "its all decided in Taipei" but "we can request".

Back to the original dispute. I point to the manual - but she is unwilling to engage. She says something about the rules often change. I kinda expected "trouble" - so pulled out a printout of the website from a few hours earlier. She's not interested in that at all.

If I book on through the website it correctly shows as 135,000 miles required. I can't do it this way as I want a stopover (one stopover is allowed for free).

I ask her to clarify with Taipei. She says she cant do that without a reservation - and we can't make one because of the availability problem. Crazy! - surely she can check the rule. I persist and she says someone will call me back. By now she seems to be more interested in something else on her screen. I see the stonewall coming and don't want to outstay my welcome.

I don't know if there is a morale problem. But I walked through the door with low expectations and still ended up disappointed. I hate having to argue for stuff that I'm entitled to - and in particular dealing with staff that just don't seem bothered.

I have previously mentioned that I've not had availability problems when booking award tickets - but now EVA seems to be playing that game too. As for Elite paid-for tickets, this "gold" customer has now been on a waiting list for 3 months already for a December flight. One EVA staff member suggested that I was on the waiting list because I had "booked too early".

This may seem like a small thing - but this together with an accumulation of other gripes now mean I feel no loyalty to EVA anymore and I distrust Evergreen Club.

USDHS1984

You have to be clever. If she can't figure out how to book a reservation with a stopover ask her if she can book a reservation without a stopover and after that could she please change the date on one of your flights for you.

username

It is a very centralised company so everything goes through TPE. I think what they do is they make a PNR and queue the PNR to a queue in TPE for resolution. Therefore, you need a reservation.

So you are doing LHR-TPE-SGN-TPE-LHR with a stop in TPE? Like someone suggested, get them to book the reservation but do not ticket (have mileage deducted) until your issues are figured out.

jimbo99

After writing the post, I got someone in Taipei to phone EVA. They have made the reservation from there and seemed surprised that London couldn't cope with correctly calculating the mileage. I'm still waitlisted though.

USDHS1984: sounds good... but you have to be careful! I did exactly this a few years back and guess what they wouldnt change the date later because when the ticket was created it didn't allow for stopovers. So now, I am "clever". If a ticket/fare allows stopovers, then I get them to put one in at the time of ticketing even if I don't want one. I then change the date later. That way I don't lose my stopover if I do actually want it later.

Frankly I'm just weary that these things just turn into a battle. EVA used to be better.

username

Yes. If you ticket stopovers and don't use them, the most you would lose is the airport tax. It is much cheaper than re-ticketing.

CZ Flyer

Wow! That's the exact kind of story which always amazes me about EVA; they look and act like a premium airline but when it comes to taking care of their FF's they just don't get it. I tried a few flights with them a couple of years back - only regional stuff to see how they operate but I always walked away underwhelmed.

elitetraveler

When they launched they seemed like a great alternative to lame CI -- and at the start they I think had training and consultants from SQ and LH -- they were among the first airlines to have totally flat and horizontal seats in F. But after about 4-5 years, it seemed like they lost their drive to compete at the highlest levels of service and seating. Ive had maybe two flights on them in the past three years and found the J seating outdated and the food service modest.

At the same time, I think CI has stepped it up bit. In fact, there was a trip report in Business Traveller Asia in the past month that pretty much said they need to do better. All together, they seem to have wasted their chance.

jimbo99

The London office rang me back to say that Taipei had told them that I indeed could make the booking as I had wanted for 135,000 miles plus an extra 20,000 for a second stopover. Sounded a bit like they were doing me a favour. No apology for getting it wrong in the first place. Attitude was that it wasn't their fault.

Taipei are handling the reservation now. But they said availability is a problem - and suggested that I could book earlier in the future. Ha ha ha, meanwhile, as I say, as an EVA gold I have a paid-for ticket here - return portion waitlisted since July for a December flight and a previous comment was that maybe I had "booked too early".

I do think airlines underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing. When I last looked, 182 people had viewed this thread and presumably most would be frequent flyers, intending EVA fliers, or both. Also I often get chatting to people in lounges etc and elitetraveler summed things up pretty well about the state of EVA. If you go onto their website to make a comment, you are simply given a list of their offices. You can comment about a particular "flight experience" either by their comment card or using the online form. It seems they are open to gripes about inflight service, but assume nothing else goes wrong.

yvrcnx

Very true. I am a good example for that. I did a few flights with EVA Air about 2 years ago but then chose to move my business to SQ, OZ and TG for my 3 - 4 trips a year to SE Asia and additional 1 - 2 trips to ICN.
All trips are in paid C/J class except the occasional trip to ICN.
Over the last 2 month I seriously considered going back BR because of their very reasonable fares from YVR to TPE and beyond which would save me a bit every year. I fly to MNL frequently and eventhough their transit times are very long on the return I was going to give them another try.
After having done more research, especially on FT I decided against it.
I think BR could really stand out as the "Little Airline that could" but because of the little care they show to it's loyal customers and decrease in service I will stay with what I have for now.
I think most important is to know that when things do go wrong in travel that the airline will take care of you. I have found that to be true without exception with SQ ,OZ and TG, for that I am willing to pay extra, not so with BR.
It's to bad as I think BR does have a good product and it really wouldn't take much to offer a great service and take care of all their customers, especially the loyal ones.

username

I think things get routine and sloppy with them over the years - although we are better now than a few years ago.

I think the whole airline thing was Y.F. Chang's dream. Initially, the focus was to have a good passenger airline, regardless of the cost. Later, they had to make the numbers look good for the IPO and now it has the pressure of being a publicly traded company.

They probably also realized that this airline business is cut-throat and they really have to watch out for their cost. Phasing out F, for example, would not be something the original EVA Air would even think about.

The ever-delaying mainland routes also is not what they expected. I think Cargo also turned out to be a bigger piece of the business (originally, all the M11s were all passenger).

I don't think their goal is to have a world class mega-carrier. Taiwan's geographic and political environment does not really allow that. They have the niche they wanted to maintain and I think they are happy with where it is. The cargo, hotel, maintenance and catering are all part of the group and passenger service might not be as profitable to warrent attention/investment?

Finally, it is the culture of the company - inward looking and rigid. It is not about being the best - it is about following the processes and not get into trouble. For passengers, unless you have connections, I think it is difficult to get them to go above-and-beyond to take care of you.