b_magee

Yes, I have also had great communication via emailing their local ticketing offices. While many of ETs systems seem "broken" by some, they find a way to just make things work. Oddly, emailing a ticket office is one of those things that seems to work very well with ET. I have had way faster and more complete service by emailing a local office (which is often just a team of 2 or 3 people) than by calling their contact centre.

dvs7310

Personally I always pick up a local SIM card as soon as I land and load enough data on it for the period I'll be in country if I'm going to be remote like that. In many places in the world the data is very cheap, maybe as low as $5 or so for a week's worth, and some countries the SIM card itself is actually free. I haven't been in Tanzania for a few years now but I remember my SIM card and data package costing me less than $20 in total, it may have been closer to $10.

As for calling Addis, you can load $1 increments onto Viber for international calls. Well worth it to avoid the headache in my opinion, but to each their own. This doesn't apply just to ET, but for many airlines it's just so much easier to call their home country main reservations number than trying the local offices which are sometimes staffed at limited hours or don't answer the phone because they are busy with other things. Usually the number in the home country is even staffed 24 hours, so you don't have to worry about time zones.

B747-437B

All ET's local toll-free reservations numbers forward to the main call center in Addis. Makes no difference if you dial the US 800 number or the Indian 800 number, you'll get the same call center. You will need to dial the actual landline number for the physical ticket office if you want to reach someone in the actual country you are calling.

TTC192Rocket

And for my particular set of flights, neither the website not app worked. Hence, emailing the local office (YYZ) in my case.

susiesan

Update: after emailing ET to an email address given to me from a FB message, I got a confirmation email today, the day before I leave, that both of us have seats, 2D and 2H on ET 510 on the homebound flight. The message had off of the ET flights, tickets numbers, everything all spelled out. One shouldn't have to work this hard to confirm seat assignments, especially for a business class passenger.

chrismo2

I can confirm that ET is a bit of a mess regarding seat assignments. I flew ET two days ago. CPH-FRA-ADD-DAR. (CPH-FRA operated by LH). The tickets were booked through our company travel agents, and since they were not booked directly with the airline, change of seat assignment was not possible on ET's website or app. So I used the chat function on the webpage, it worked like a charm and I got the seats I wanted. ET's homepage showed the new seats but checkmytrip did not, probably because ET uses Sabre and Checkmytrip is Amadeus. Also, I had two confirmation numbers, one from the TA (Amadeus) that worked with LH and one for ET.

On travel day, I checked in at the airport (with ET booking no). Check-in machine in CPH issued all 3 boarding passes but changed my ADD-DAR seat. Actually the screen on the check in machine stated my assigned seat, but when the BP came out, there was another seat number on it. I tried to look at ET's app, and according to the app, my seat and the first four rows on the plane did not exist anymore, so I couldn't change it back. I think it has to do with the seat map reload 48 hrs. before departure. At ADD, at the transfer checkpoint, all DAR-bound passengers had to line up and have their boarding pass checked for correct seat assignment as well.

Tokyoite

ET uses Sabre, so check with Virtuallythere.com