johnirvine

Today, I had two extremely unsatisfactory conversations with THY agents on the normal Turkish call centre number. As well as speaking very poor subcontinent English, they did not have a clue about how to handle queries with bookings. Has anyone else had problems with this new Indian-based call centre?

quirrow

Yup they are basically useless when it comes to award redemptions too! If you're based in the US/Canada your best bet is calling the sales office or e-mailing your queries to the sales/ticketing office based in LA/NY

siberslava

What's worse is that i live in Turkey and called the local number here and got connected to the Indian call center after pressing 9 for English. Turns out they cannot help with domestic reservations so they had to transfer me to the Turkish call center. Why not just route me to the Turkey based one in the first place if calling from Turkey? Then again after living here for more than a decade nothing surprises me anymore

nacho

Oh yes, they told me that it costs 60,000 points to get a return reward for domestic US, and 90,000 points for an Y award seat to HKG.

They transferred me to CS in IST because they haven't sorted out my family mileage programme, but it's still useless as they don't want to look at my documents.

geirfugl

^I have used the elite line and been conected to the new call centre in India,its the best thing thats happend to TK for years,they are profesional and respond in seconds unlike the "I dont care,whats it to me Turkish agents",realy fantastic!!! TK probably finaly realised that they were likly to loose customers if the old way of doing things went on!!!
I now use the English option evry time due to the profesinalism of the Indian agents as oposed to the "I do not give a f...atitud of their Turkish counterparts",regardless of what Language you comunicate in.

Anyway,if speaking to somebody who will not bother to help you is important,why dont you just choose the Turkish option,no problem!!

tobegold

Spent the last week of calling to redeem miles for flights, talked to at least 10 agents which were all incompetent except for the first one that was able to book my outbound flights and another that was able to book my return flights, both having 1 united leg and 2 TK legs.

One agent told me that Air Canada was not part of star alliance.
Two agents told me I had to contact United or other partners to book flights on their metal using TK miles.
Another agent told me I had to contact United to pay the taxes on their part of the ticket as TK could not calculate these, and this had to be done prior to TK being able to accept my payment.
All but 2 had terrible English, mumbled, and I had to repeat 3 times the flights I wanted.
One agent almost booked me to St Petersburg instead of San Francisco.

Now, after having paid the fees for the outbound flights I am told that I have to go to a TK Sales office to get the tickets, closest one is 800 miles away, the Toronto office is 2,000 miles away and does not pick-up the phone, ignores emails and faxes. I was told by the first agent when booking the outbound that the call center would issue the ticket after I paid the fees, so was surprised when told that I had to go to the sales office AFTER making the payment.

It seems like partner flights are never available, despite showing on the various tools. I can see all business and economy seats maybe not being open to TK, but 99.9%!!! It makes me wonder if they only want you on TK to get the fees and are blocking partner redemptions.

Over the last 2- 3 years I always had great service when calling in to get E+ upgrades or missing miles deposited, but this was before this Indian call center which is nothing but CR@P.

LP101

I called the North American call center number last week for seating assignments. I'm not sure where my call was transfered to, but there was virtually no wait time and the agent was able to help me without problems. (By comparison, I had to wait very long times when I called a few times last year) Actually, I was a bit bummed I didn't hear the "We are Turkish Airlines" hold music at all.

Bozzie4

+1... just upgraded a domestic hop using miles. I fully readied myself to be on hold for 45 minutes with the "we are globally yours" playing for 45 minutes--instead I was connected to a wonderfully kind agent with an Indian accent with zero hold and was upgraded in under five minutes. It was a downright pleasant experience and I received a confirmation e-mail before I was even off the phone.

I should note that I was able to book over the phone, even though the Star Alliance Upgrade website did not have any availability. (although the fact that this is even a potential makes me excited)

Bozzie4

And now they've screwed it up. Come on TK!

CAlex

Big improvement in wait time (zero wait), but lack of quality and consistency makes it equally useless.

I am trying to get an award ticket booked for more than a week now, few things came up:
- award availability is exactly what I found on ANA site, which is good.
- I heard on several calls from TK agents that Thai, Asiana and then ANA are NOT Star Alliance partners. Hang up and call again
- they sent me to LAX ticket office and advised their working hours are 2:00 - 5:45pm. I arrived there at 3:15 and the desk only opened at 3:40. Turkish punctuality.
- for a one-way OTP-MUC-BKK-USM one-way ticket I was quoted multiple amounts of miles needed:
1. 45k miles - correct. Sales office agent could not confirm though (!!?)
2. 90k miles - agent did not know about one-way fares
3. 65k miles - agent said that because there are 2 different Airlines involves, miles are deducted for 2 tickets. Dumbest, I hung up.
- agents looked up incorrect MCT in BPO, as they were searching for international-domestic on different Airlines, not TG.
- they made me lose 37k miles because they said that as long as I pay for the ticket by 05-Jan I will not lose the soon-to-expire miles. Incorrect, I lost those on 01-Jan.

One funny aspect of the new Indian call center is that they don't know international numbering, they still use the local system with reference to "1 lak" (100.000 units).

My ticket is still not booked, trying my luck again today with LA sales office over the phone.

johnirvine

The new Indian call centre is truly useless. Today, I tried to change an I class award ticket from BKK-IST to SAI-IST. According to the M&S rules, it is allowed to change the origin and date of award flights within the same region/season for a fee of EUR 20. However, the agent incorrectly told me this was totally impossible. Only after 25 minutes on the telephone and multiple contacts with a supervisor was he willing to admit that he was misinformed. However, in the end, he got his own back for the loss of face by informing me that there was no availability on any of the dates requested!

vishalgupta22

+1
Not specific to TK though.

nldogbert

Just to share my 1st time experience with the call center in India. I was trying to get a one way award ticket from KUL-ICN.
Here are my observations

Good:
- no wait
- at least they know about the number of miles needed and if they are not sure will double check

Bad:
- don't know airport code - expects me to provide them the code
- don't know what is the differences between a paid and award ticket (had to clearly state that I want to pay with miles and not money for them to understand- I think they understood)
- thinks that Malaysia Airlines is part of *A (this goes back to 2nd point). Person was very confident that it was available for award redemption, until I requested to inform me of the booking class, and only than the light turned on
- with reference to the above point, I could hear him (mumbling) to himself on that mistake.
- sounds somewhat not interested in doing what they do - well at least they do still do it.
- expects the customer to spell out names in the international call out codes ( I guess not everyone can do that.. luckily was not a problem for me).


All in all, I would say that it is still slightly better compared to the previous dealing with the Turkish call center as there the people are more arrogant as in if they are not in the mood, they will just try and get you off the phone asap, while here you can still coach/manipulate them towards your wishes. So patience here with them is really required to get what information you need.

Cheers!

ps: The surcharges are ridiculously high on TK for award tickets (my first experience). They wanted approx 160 Euro's in taxes and fee for a 1-way with SQ from KUL-ICN above the 20k miles in Eco.

starflyergold

This is how taxes and charges look like on a SQ revenue ticket KUL-ICN

warakorn

Are you kidding me? A surcharge of EUR 160 for a longhaul award ticket is very low - in comparison to surcharges, charged by other European FFPs!