deissi

@EuroFlash, that's just really poor CS. An IRROP situation which would have been easy to handle, but they made it a really poor experience for you.

On a separate note, the AY Family+Friends point transfer system is down. I would like to book award flights, but Mrs. deissi's account is 3k points short, and I can't transfer the points to her online. I call CS and explain the situation - she says she is happy to take care of the situation against a fee of EUR 20. I reiterate that it is their IT system that is stopping me from effecting the transfer. She says they are working very hard on it, but declines to waive the EUR 20 fee. Well done, AY, well done.

EuroFlash

Haha jesus christ I really notice that Finnair has major issues with leniency. Everything has to go according the rules, CS doesn't seem to be human in any way.

Another example: I had a flight booked to BKK with my boyfriend and booked seats in advance so we'd be able to be seated next to each other (2 different bookings so yeah..). I bought the onward seats just before my BF and I would become Finnair Plus Silver, not knowing we would get a 50% discount for the seats. Then I turned Silver and noticed I could book the seats at a discount. I called CS and asked for half of the price to be refunded, they didn't want to do so. So I asked them to give us free seats on the return journey (that would equal it out). They agreed and sent me the seat confirmation, but 30 seconds after she came back to me and said that she made a mistake and it wasn't allowed for her to do this. The cancelled the seat reservations and after me telling her that this is absolute ........ she called an other department and said that they would make an exception for me, but not for my boyfriend. I agreed for the time being but I told her it kinda pissed me off. Then my seat reservation got cancelled too and she said there was nothing more she could do. These were the rules and she wasn't planning on giving me or my BF our seats back.

I filed an official complaint, booked the seats of the return joureny myself and got those refunded because of the complaint + an extra 3K points. Still not satisfied though.. what a poor service.

timma1971

Scandinavian letters in my surname and BAC Silver card were causing problems at check-in in HEL a few weeks ago. For some unknown reason my card details were dropped off from my booking and the check-in lady insisted she must move me from the exit row to a regular seat which weren’t many available at that point. I tried to explain I had made the seat reservation at the same time with the booking and that I’m obviously the same person even though my BAC card has letter ö replaced by o instead of oe in the reservation. She tried to re add my FF number without any luck and went to spoke with her supervisor a couple of desks away. Came back and suggested I could keep my exit row seat but had to pay for it!?

At this point did get somewhat irritated and gave her a small lecture on OneWorld benefits. Eventually she went to her supervisor again, came back and called someone to get instructions on how to skip the payment phase. Eventually after nearly 20 mins had my “regular” boarding passes in hand. Didn’t even try the speed track security and at lounge just passed my card with boarding pass and explained the situation.

The return leg on the other hand went smoothly and without any problems. To be honest, have to admit the check-in lady was very attentive and obviously tried her best.

intuition

I believe this has been going on for awhile. There is a very aggressive machine checking on FF# vs name on reservation. If the machine thinks FF# and person travelling are not the same, all tier benefits are invalidated and you can't check in without paying.

It is not limited to OW members, AY+ members are also denied checking in unless payment is made for tier perks like seat selection. Check is poorly calibrated and has many false negatives.

WilcoRoger

How difficult would be to code to equate Ö with OE or O (Ä with AE or A, etc)?

I guess a large part of people with Ä,Ö,Ü (not to mention , Á, É, Ê, Í, Î, Ó, Ő, Ű etc) in their names just use the base letter without the diacritic. And that's just the vocals. And then some booking would be made using the unexplainable AE, OE, etc replacement

intuition

The machine-readable part of a passport has a standardize way of handling characters outside the obsolete 7-bit US-ASCII.
However, I doubt people would be happy bein called JAERVINEN PAEIVAE on the finnair plus card, which would be needed as finnair requires names on profile and ticket to be identical.

I guess we nee to see Johanna Jäkälä denied her seat before IT learns how to calibrate the comparison of names...

TTL

Add SMT to that equation and there is even more trouble. Ended up forgetting about scandi-letters from my name in most travel profiles and the problem remains solved so far. However, the nuisance letters remain in the passport ä = ae. Luckily, when paying flights with credit cards, the spell checkers do not seem to mind the minor difference of a and ä when all the other details match.

Purjelentaja

I haven't had such problems even though I have two of those Scandinavian letters in my name. When making booking at Finnair net pages using those scandi letters in my name, Ä is replaced by A, Ö by O on the ticket. When booking with most of OTAs, the replacement letters are usually AE and OE. Both versions seem to be equally recognized when flying Finnair as AY+ member. Always, though, have to be prepared for minor difficulties when travelling outside EU, that's why I usually prefer writing my name on reservation with AE and OE version when flying airlines other than AY, and the more the further the country is from Europe.

Probably the problem timma1971 had are caused by some system not recognizing the different spelling versions the same way it does with AY+ members. In any case it sounds strange.

Trav1970

WilcoRoger

The point transfer was messed up - I got to transfer the same points thrice by accident (before the origin account showed zero). They clawed back the extras some 10 days later. And the transfer system have been down ever since

FlyingFinn

Now don't get me started on this one. It's not only the Scandinavian characters (of which I have enough in my last name) but also the very common (at least in Finland) practice of your official name (as in your passport, ID card etc.) having a first name you've never used. I'm one such a person, my official name is "High Flying Finn" although all my life I've used "Flying Finn" instead of "High Finn". So of course all my FF accounts etc. are in the name of FF. So I cannot use the name HFF on the tickets if I want to get my miles and status benefits (I've already picked up the practice of using it for LCCs etc. where there's no FF to be had).

Now these days I'm getting lots and lots of hassle especially in the US when the name in my passport is a super set of whatever name is in my flight ticket - since the self service kiosks insist on scanning your passport they fail at the name check (Delta kiosks used to have this great option of overriding it and having the document check done at the gate but even that got withdrawn at some point) forcing me to queue for manual check in (okayish if you have status with the airline in question, total pain is you don't) and basically giving you the idea that you're doing something illegal.

I've lost count of the number of times I've been asked "Who booked this ticket? Your name doesn't match?" etc. but after you confirm them you live abroad and not the US it seems to be okay (I guess they have some kind of waiver rule for foreigners), although sometimes it has required supervisor intervention (I once waited for like 45 minutes at security at DTW when the young TSA girl said "I don't have the stripes to do anything about it and someone was just fired here last week for failing at the name check so I won't even try." - when the senior agent finally arrived he was like "Next time use your full name.").

I'm also pretty sure this has resulted in a couple of secondary inspections at CBP which as anyone who has gone through one knows is a total third world experience. In fact it has caused me to stay away from the US for quite a while now.

It's gotten to the point that I've seriously considered officially changing my name to "FF" and dropping the never used first name. Still, that seems to be a bit extreme just to satisfy the needs of paranoid computer systems. I wish you could somehow add aliases or additional names to your FFP account (within certain reason of course) so that the name match would be a bit more relaxed and I could book the tickets using my full name for anal countries...

intuition

This mimics my situation exactly. With Finnair I felt forced to alter my AY+ account to match the names I never use. This was done many years ago. It works, but is very odd, for instance when they call me and ask for "1.st firstname" and I go like "No, who is that?!... Oh, sorry yeah, that is me."

Sometimes the booking process slips up and I end up travelling with a booking with my calling name and while slightly troublesome, in the past it usually ended up well.
However, lately changes have been made in AY logics and if name on ticket isn't identical with AY+ account there are no seat selection perks, for instance. And probably no other perks either, including no points earned.


Just like you, I have also started to contemplate changing my legal name. This is how bad it has gotten.
However, I am not sure it would please Finnairs computers still. Do they only need LASTNAME FIRSTNAME to be correct or do they need all firstnames, identical an in correct order?

I could change the order of my names to
2.nd FIRSTNAME 3.rd FIRSTNAME 1.st FIRSTNAME LASTNAME
but there is not a very good ring to the combination and if they still need 3.rd and 2.nd name to be stated on AY+ account and ticket, then it is all in vain.


For even more fun, I would like to add my kanji-name (transcribed to latin aplhabet) to my first names. But I am afraid that my asian strategy is not compatible with Finnair...

ylefin

This is really not Finnairs fault but part of the journey, anyway. Baggage handling in Manchester was so slow (45 min, no rush hour) that I missed all good connections to Liverpool and arrived almost 2 hours later than planned. Flight was on-time. Compensation? Finnairs fault in fact partly because they should know that MAN has baggage problems and did not inform passengers

FFlash

FFlash

This is something new. Previously it has been possible to wait during call or give my number for them to call back, but now I only get "all lines are busy" and then the call hangs up. I really hope this is not a new norm.