[gush]
I know it's old hat to most of us, but I just completed a rather complicated re-issue booking with the AA RTW desk, and once again want to heap praise on them. Maybe there are exceptions, but I find them to be up there with the EXP desk in terms of professionalism and competence.

The rep I spoke to said one of her recent callers was told by the rates dept. that he should go with BA instead (no AA segments or something) and he balked and explained to the RTW person that he'd rather pay BA's $50 handling fee to AA if they'd do the reissue instead, owing to his unhappiness with the BA RTW desk. "My" rep said that she got Rates conferenced in to the same call, and all 3 of them laughed at his offer, with Rates saying, "Okay, we understand, no problem" and then going ahead with the reissue.

AA may not offer the best hard product in the alliance, but their customer service people are the best IMO.
[/gush]

I absolutely agree. Both the EXP desk and the RTW desk have been incredibly helpful in planning and executing my OWE tickets.....

I've learned to know one of the stars of the AA RTW desk. She has an incredible sense of customer service, takes ownership in seeing to it that the job gets done, and thinks it is fun to work on the most complex of itineraries.

I'm not going to disagree with the overall message, because I fully agree in the general sense, but I also say that IME both the RTW desk and the EXP desk are getting more and more bad apples in the last year or so, or maybe I'm just one of those that gets the short end of the stick more than most, I dunno.

Yeah, I'd guess that the most exhuberant fans always ask for their favorite agent, and it's just one specific person. I don't do that because although she surely doesn't mind, there just has to be an impact on office politics when one person seems to be getting all the call-backs.

If you take the luck of the draw, chances are you'll get someone quite competent on the rules, business-like rather than overly friendly, who will deal with you, not do you any special favors (like holding your unticketed res forever), and move on to the next caller. Apparently that's enough to beat BA, who seem to have uniquely demoralized their staff.

Completely agree with the OP's sentiments.

After having dealt with the RTW desk for my very first DONE4, I now recognise a lot of the voices on the line and often hope that it'd be one of the cool ones. There's one who recognises me as 'the guy from Flyertalk' as I was the first person that she served who's from Flyertalk. She asked whether I was from FT during our first conversation due to my weird (to put it mildly) itinerary. Turns out that her colleagues send emails around the office of 'OMG!' itineraries from FTers for a laugh. It's more like a big chat whenever I get her on the line and she seems to have a lot of fun playing with the fare rules and throwing up ideas on what I could do.

I don't feel good playing favourites though but never had too much of a problem, even with the ones I'd consider bad apples. But when I have to build a new itinerary from scratch I might just ask for that agent I described. Was pretty lucky I "scored" said agent on my first call to the RTW desk.

We're all talking about the same person. I actually think there are two others who I would not be reluctant to use. I only ask for the superstar if I have a complicated issue. If it is simple date/time change, I take who I get.