I would suggest everyone to just call our wondeful elite line to do their booking... see if they can make it work ...

Then bombard TTU with "web site doesn't work / Elite line does" e-mails

I wanted to unscubscribe from NWA emails.

This is very difficult under the current system, which, on NWA.com, works like this:

go to
WorldPerks tab > Manage My Account > Address Change Request

You will see
WorldPerks® Address Change Request
Update or review your address, phone numbers, or email address.
Please select your current residence country...(it could be listed here, as it is in my account)

hit
GO

You will then see
WorldPerks® Address Change Request
Update your WorldPerks account address and phone information below, then select 'Update'. Note that this update will not change your e-mail or electronic notification options or your traveler profile for nwa.com Reservations.
To update e-mail and electronic contact information only, go directly to My NWA Info. Or, to update your traveler profile for nwa.com Reservations click here....

When clicking on the red highlighted "My NWA Info" you get to a place with 4 more tabs...

(I'll let you check my work by going thru ALL these steps yourself, so don't bother clicking my red words here)

Now, you have to go through (and hit continue) the "Contact Info" tab to get to the "Travel Alerts" tab, and you have to change something in there by hitting "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" from travel alerts in order to get to the "NWA Email" tab. In fact you can only highlight and make clickable the "NWA Email" tab once you have done the first two, even if you have no intention of really wanting to change anything in the first two tabs!

It is here--finally--that you can update or unsubscribe you email alerts.

THAT is way too much work! It should be easier, there should be a simple, one stop "My Profile" section, and it should be easier still to unsubscribe from the emails elsewhere!

Anyone else have any thoughts on this one?

;)MM

Miles for "beta" testing new nwa.com??
 

I would think NW would find it valuable to ask FT members to "beta" test a new system before it is rolled out to the wider public. I've done this for other companies for various products (shampoos, foods, and even computer systems). An end user will typically try things on a system that the designers and builders never even imagined. Also, there is a huge variety of products (in many different geographical areas and many different conditions) we use to access the system.

While I'd guess many of us would do it for free, Bonus Miles would be a good reward, but BIS miles would REALLY motivate us.

All we would have to do is log on to a slightly different system name and go through the routines we usually do. It could be either "hot" (really working) or "cold" (couldn't actually buy). Test use time could be easily monitored and one basis for the reward. There could be a set list of exercises to try - i.e. add a new FF member, change a profile, find an actual ticket from A to B, find an award ticket, find a ticket for a certain time of day, etc.

Just brainstorming here, but I think FT could well be part of NW's solution rather than the first to hit the bugs.

There are sort of two types of people in this world, the technophiles and the technophobics. I'd guess FT has more than a fair share of technophiles, but the other group could be represented by volunteering some of the friends and family members one typically helps.

I'd think it would be easier for NW to work a list of reported problems/concerns/gripes from a short list of users rather than have the whole user population fussing at them at once.

It would never catch everything, but might go a long way toward a smoother public roll-out. And besides, it would have already dealt with what is probably one of their more vocal, particular user subsets - FT.

Romelle

thats a great idea! miles incentive or no.

I think what they could do is start a sort of pannel of people--anyone can join it bt there's a cut off date and some way to be sure those in the pannel have a vested interest in getting things done, be they savvy techies or otherwise.

take a look at the NWA DO about the possibility of chartering a plane, for example. It is probably that by starting the thread the way the OP did, those still in it are the ones who really want to do the thing. So similarly, NWA could get a group of people--albiet a very large cross section --involved in trying to help them make a site better for everyone.

Roll outs are all about money, however, so we need to make sure this doesnt turn into one of those surveys that totally looks like it's skewed to generate only a certain type of positive response for the higher ups to see.

I have no idea how to do all this but such ideas would really help us all and in the end, the airline we fly.

These are all great ideas, but it's in the hands of Orbitz, NWA is just contracting them to do the work... and de-bug the software... it's an Orbitz issue, not a NWA issue if you know what I mean. Orbitz doesnt care one bit about us...

oh gawd, really?
just as target is linked with amazon, nextel was sucked up (and diminished) by sprint, and stowe, VT ski area is linked with AIG, we are subject to the whims of way too giant entities to even get anywhere?

Oh well, we may as well just treat them as we do Citi, and find holes and schemes to reap everything we can because like you said, they are not going to care one bit about us

I don't know if we should be blaming Orbitz. People seem to forget that the old booking engine also said "Orbitz technology" or "powered by Orbitz", just not as prominently as the new engine. For all I know, the Orbitz connection might just be Orbitz being the schedule/availability provider as a pass-through from ITA, since Orbitz is powered by ITA.

The new engine still looks to me a lot more like "powered by Continental.com". Especially the identical-except-for-colors-and-logos award booking screens.

Love the idea of NWA (or Orbitz, or whomever) doing a beta site with some incentive of NW miles or fare/miles discounts or whatever for testing. Maybe only offer it to elites so as to get experienced travelers.

I've got no problem with the concept of the redesign once they work out the bugs. Whoever "They" are....

I can't seem to get to manage my account or manage my reservations right now. Somewhat bothersome...

Just worked for me. Must have been something transient...

past travel
 

why we can't see the past travel in detail with the new nwa.com website? we can't see the past reservation and flight number and type etc...

While NW Scoop is great, why can't someone in IT group at NWA actually come onboard "officially" and say to us... if you see a bug... this is how to document it, this is what we need to know/see to be able to fix it... FT'ers are willing to help if they are engaged and not ignored. I'd be glad to provide input on problems I've had... if I knew what specific things IT wanted and where to send a bug report...

nwa.com is the MAJOR outlet for the purchase and sale of tickets for the airline... why would people deal with the hassles of using it if they can get a better experience at expedia or orbitz or travelocity?

the award calendar needs MAJOR work... i'll just leave it at that... spent several hours searching this past weekend and guess what ... had to call and spend 30 min with a CSR to get everything booked... nwa.com thinks a 1 hr 10 min connection at CDG is fine... with no other option available on-line...

My thinking in computer land is that a "BUG" is when something does not work the way it was designed/programmed.

To me, THIS (below) still remains one of NWA's biggest "BUGS" and it does fit that description in terms of something on the NWA/WP web site world:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=768294

-thank you for taking the time to read it and make worthy comments.

;)MM

Needed award (and paid) travel search improvement
 

Give us a "Search by Sched" function that actually works!

Even if the new site functioned properly, which it doesn't, it still won't let us book a US-EU-EU-US itin like the following combo:

AF MIA-CDG
KL CDG-OSL
CO OSL-MIA

If I search separately for MIA-CDG using default, I get the AF legs showing, then I search OSL-MIA separately by default, and CO shows up as available. But I can't make this combination happen by any method. Then I actually specify AF for MIA-CDG and it says "No flights etc.. are available"..despite what the AF and SkyTeam timetables are telling me, and despite what NWA.COM told me during a default search seconds before!! :mad:

We had this problem with the previous booking tool but there were sufficient workarounds for us not to escalate our problems to the Elite line or TTU for each transaction.

So, come on now, solve our issues and stop the waste of Elite CSR time, which has become absolutely notorious in the past few weeks for exactly this reason.

Let's be as clear as possible about what we want and need:

A "Search by Schedule" function for awards that allows us to specify our airline of choice SEPARATELY FOR EACH OF THE LEGS AND THAT PRESENTS US WITH A RICHER INVENTORY FOR EACH OF THEM: SU, AF, KL, CO; whomever serves our route. EDIT: AND THAT PRESERVES OUR PREVIOUS SELECTION AS WE DO SO!

If this doesn't happen, not only will the WPE continue to be frustrated, but the WP Elite service will be degraded because they have to field so many totally unnecessary calls about itins we could be booking, and indeed had been booking until the new booking tool was prematurely deployed.

I don't know if this is tied to the new booking engine, but I was unsuccessful when I tried to cancel an award trip online today.

It worked up until the page where they ask for your name, address and phone number (even though I was logged in). The drop-down box for entering your state was tiny, only a little more than one character wide, and there was nothing in the dropdown when you looked. Highlighting the box and typing in the state code didn't work, either. This was a required entry, but I went ahead and clicked on the continue button. It returned an error saying my City entry was invalid (it wasn't), and suggested I not use certain characters. Clearly a programming error.

So I had to call to have the itinerary canceled. I had them transfer me to nwa.com support and outlined the problem to them, so our resident NWA apologist with unspecified ties to the company needn't post a snarky reply.

This all happened after I spent quite a bit of time wrestling with the booking engine until I could eke out a paid itinerary that was satisfactory. There may be some issues with trying to specify a time on an intermediate leg, but I wasn't able to puzzle it out, and ended up settling for a routing that yields fewer miles. It will only matter if I fall a few EQMs short at the end of next year, though.

nwa.com is pretty annoying right now.

I've had the same problem off and on for the last few months. It often does the same thing when I'm using Firefox. I've got to switch to IE to have it work.