flumoxed

So your advice is to act like a child and throw a temper tantrum if you don't get what you want?

You are lucky SQ agents are some of the most polite in the industry, any other airline's agents would've told you off.

cowie

There's a huge difference between asking for a waiver out of goodwill and bullying your way into getting the rules bent in your favour. You may not agree with certain policies, but you had agreed to the terms and conditions when you signed up for the ticket.

jjjohn

Just some experience.
Keep the same routing and just change the time and date, follow the t&c of original ticket.
Change the routing even within the same zone, need to ressue ticket, follow the new t&c, even just add a stopover.

kapooncha

No, my advice is to fight for what you think is right. Just because an airline says "no" doesn't mean that is the end of the conversation. Anyone who accepts "no" so easily isn't cut out for this hobby.

You think I care if an agent tells me off? lol, I'll tell them off, and HUCA.

flumoxed

What I think is right? Give me a break, we aren't talking about civil rights over here. Chances are you got these miles for pennies on the dollar, just like many do.

And you can HUCA all you want, you got extremely lucky that you got someone to get you a standard award and the saver price. Advising other people that this is the norm is a fruitless effort.

koohansen

Call centers, every call has a log. When you give your PNR, it will just add on to the "customer's log" every agent attending to the call knows you called before.

cowie

You are certainly entitled to fight for whatever you feel is right. But swearing at an agent in the course of doing so is just not on. It saddens me to have to point this out, but this is basic human decency.

kapooncha

I don't derive any pleasure from having to get tough with a rep. But, as I said, sometimes nice doesn't get it done. I'm not going to let these airlines walk all over me.

cowie

I am truly sorry that you continue to believe that browbeating an agent into submission in any way justifiable.

kapooncha

I only have to justify the behavior to myself.

Wen Zheng

Think one should look into context and there are many occasion where one face with a clearly incompetent CSO who may not have the interest to resolve an issue unless one push further. Of course, a easier way would be to HUCA. But at times may need to push abit further, especially where the waiting time for each call is going to be an hour.

For tpsmith82 flight, SYD and MEL is clearly two different location. This would definitely require the re-issuance of tickets which mean the new miles rate should apply in accordance to the tnc.

However, for kapooncha, it may be a simple case of incompetent CSO who did not want to go further other than the standard procedures. If a pax has redeemed a ticket with two segments, cancelling one of the segment should not result in the other segment being cancelled. SQ can definitely hold on to the other segment and reissue the ticket. The only exception is where married segments apply in the booking where the individual segments does not availability at all (i.e. SIN-HKG-SFO individual segments availability may not be the same as the married segment from SIN-SFO on the same flight). However, presumably that kapooncha has used the word "stopover" correctly, there should not be a married segment issue. In this case, SQ can definitely hold on the NRT-LAX segment and reissue the ticket with this single segment (kapooncha would need to pay the cancellation fees , where applicable). This would not be a plain reissuance on the understanding that kapooncha is also looking at the refund of the miles differences.

kapooncha

Bingo!

tpsmith82

Well...this has turned into quite the conversation. I'll try to just keep on topic and only mention I have worked in multiple front line customer service industries and in all honestly both tactics can work. I would say the real factor involved though is the agent you speak with and whether or not they respond to anger or politeness, and there are both. I myself tend to lean towards being polite and understand an agents hand are tied most of the time.

In this case we are talking and extra 5,000 miles per ticket, not the end of the world. Had they doubled the required miles overnight like some programs have been known to do I would probably have pushed quite a bit harder. In the end when the agent called me back she informed me that it would still require the additional 5,000 miles per ticket. While not entirely happy about the situation it is my choice to change my final destination and in doing so the ticket will need to be reissued.

So I transferred 2K MR, 6K UR and 4K CO miles to get the required miles needed to change the ticket. For me the MR points where nearly useless as they were the last I had, only $20-$30 value. The CO miles also were nearly the last I had and I did not put much value to them, again possibly $40. The real cost came from the UR points which I value at about $90. So that $90 plus the possible $25 per ticket to change is a total of $140 and we'll say $200 if you want to put value to the other points. So $100 per ticket. Not a big deal when you consider what I'm gaining. I've have gone from a "low service" redeye flight to an afternoon full service flight. Both on an A-380, both in suites. Now with the full service I will be able to enjoy caviar, full diner menu and service, alert and present crew and according to sunflight.net I'll get to watch the sunset over Australia! All of these things make it for me very worth the extra miles and not an issue I'm willing to raise my stress over.

Thanks for all the advice.

kaffir76

Thanks, this was what I was looking for.
I thought that post devaluation, any change in date will result in a change fee $25 + the diff. in KF miles
E.g. 88k vs 95k LAX-SIN-BKK
However the system is only charging me $25 to change the date.
I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.

This was not the case for the last deval. 2 years ago where I was charged the diff in KF miles (15% DISCOUNT - SIN-MAN-IAH)
(I also had to pay $20 to reissue the ticket as I extended the validity by 1 more year, which was fine)

BLTraveler

Did they ever get back to you? I just called to have the carrier changed from ET to TK and they said I would have to pay an additional 7K miles for the same dates/destination.