jvasiles

I am having the exact same problem as the OP. I booked a simple one-way flight with Air Canada from YVR to LHR using my M&S miles a few days ago. After making the payment with my miles and the taxes/fees, I received an email with a TK booking code and a ticket number. I then contacted Air Canada and was told by an agent the ticket is not confirmed/valid. There is also no way to pull up the reservation on the Air Canada website. I then spoke with three different TK call center agents and received different responses. TK Agent #1: "Your booking is cancelled but I cannot refund your miles and taxes/fees right now. Please submit a request via the feedback form." TK Agent #2: "I can cancel your booking but you must pay $70 to redeposit your miles". Agent #3: "Your booking is valid but your ticket is not yet confirmed. Just wait for an email confirmation. I don't know how long this will take". None of the TK agents are able to provide a resolution and I am shocked at how incompetent the call center agents are. So what am I supposed to do here? Send a message via the Feedbackform which will most likely result in a non-sensical reply that doesn't address the issue? Any advice would be appreciated.

SK AAR

Contact your local TK ticket office for assistance

Kapi04

As SK AAR suggested I also would advise to contact local ticket office, maybe they will be able to reissue the ticket correcty, but that will probably be only possible if there is award class availability. If not cancel your ticket via local ticket office (also possible via e-mail) then if miles don't come back try to get them back via feedback ticket. I strongly advise to book any A* partner awards via local ticket office only. 3/4 of A* partner award bookings which I made via the call center were never issued correctly, just pure incompetence. Also check for schedule changes, TK will not reissue the ticket automatically or inform you in most cases.

It is useless to deal with call center agents, they have rarely the authority or knowledge at all to do someting in those situations.

In the end I cancelled all my tickets and changed my travel plans because I have no time to fight with TK as my travel is in near future. I have lost some miles in the past due to this but this time I was able to get those miles back with a validity of one more year. So something might have changed in their policy for the better. But you will never know for sure until you actually get the miles back

jvasiles

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, I don't live anywhere near a TK ticket office so I guess I can try to call one. Regarding cancellation, I would like to avoid this because: 1) I will be charged a $70 fee (even though I never had a confirmed ticket reservation) and 2) award availability will most likely be gone and I'll be stuck with orphaned miles. This whole situation is extremely frustrating and I've already wasted several hours dealing with incompetent call center agents.

Kapi04

That is why I said that it is also possible to contact local office via e-mail, that worked for me. I had to send a filled form, passport and bank card copies and they cancelled and issued the refund the same day, no penalty. That was after call center also wanted to charge $70 in one case. Local ticket office was much better in understanding the issue. However you might also have success (at least with the cancellation) when you find a competent call center agent and press her/him to investigate the issue further, they will most likely come with the answer that the airline cancelled the flight (which is obviously not true) and you will be able to refund.

If the award class is not available anymore I don't think you will get anywhere unfortunately. Only option probably is to show up at the airport, book a ticket yourself in case of denied boarding and claim the money back. I didn't want to take such risk.

SK AAR

E-mail (rather than calling) your local TK ticket office.

You shouldn't be charged the USD 70 fee (for voluntary cancellation) as this in invol. cancellation.

jvasiles

Update #1: I flew into Zurich airport today and went to the TK ticket office there. The ticket office agent reviewed my booking, understood the issue with the partner award ticket, and confirmed he could cancel or attempt to change my reservation. However, I would still have to pay the $70/70 CHF fee! He told me that although he works at the TK office he is actually employed by Swissport and doesn’t have the “authority” to waive cancellation or change fees! Unbelievable. His only suggestion is to send a message via the TK website’s feedback form to request a waived fee (which will likely result in non-response or a response that doesn’t address the issue, based on my prior experience). The ticket agent even showed me on his screen that he is unable to waive the fee without authorization from someone in Istanbul. So….now I have no other option than to fill the stupid feedback form and HOPE someone competent helps. This is an absolute nightmare and it’s clear TK doesn’t care at all about the customer experience and will not empower any call center agents or ticket office agents to do anything that assists customers having issues with their reservations unless they agree pay an completely unjustified $70 fee. NEVER again will I attempt to book a star alliance partner ticket.

flyerby

TK local office will always direct you to open a feedback form if you haven’t already. This is their regular MO and for a good reason that only TK backend has, in these cases, the power to change things. But if you have opened at least 3 tickets without the backend understanding your problem then this is the time for the local TK office to help. If they have understood your problem, then they can contact directly their contacts at TK HQ. In the past, due to TK local office efforts, TK have opened award inventory for me and credit me tens of thousands of miles (due to errors with their IT). Don’t settle for less than them contacting their contacts (after you’ve have opened multiple requests on the feedback form), preferably by the station manager who has the best connection with TK HQ. If you have opened multiple tickets, show them the replies and they will understand that opening another one is futile.

And it probably preferably to contact TK city office than airport office.

jvasiles

Thank you very much for the recommendations and sharing your experience. As a customer, I have to say this whole process is absolutely insane and will make me think twice about ever booking another flight with TK again, award redemption or revenue. I’m curious about your statement that there is “good reason that only TK backend has…the power to change things”, in this case a simple waived change/cancellation fee. Is TK management so untrusting of their own call center and ticket agents not to empower them to use logic and a problem solving mindset and enable them to waive an unjustified fee? Is TK management so desperate to collect fees that the customer experience means absolutely nothing anymore? Seems to me that sad answer is a resounding YES.

flyerby

I’m very much invested in TK and have little experience in dealing with major problems with other carriers. IMO, it all comes to comparing the service you get from one airline to the other. I heard that some airlines are also difficult to deal with. For example, there are numerous reports that UA award ticket in J on TK metal doesn’t provide any baggage allowance due to an IT problem with UA. This issue has not been fixed yet although many complaints with UA and their support usually does provide a solution.

nacho

UA hasn't fixed that problem for award ticket for any carrier - as long as they have 2 checked bags too you are fine, but if they allow anything less than that you are SOL.

However, I got it solved by filing a complaint to DOT. At least DOT can help with things like that. TK's issues are more fundamental - it's not comparable to Western carrier. Like RJ - you asked for a status match, they granted it and they suddenly took it away BEFORE the status ran out! I didn't know until we got to the lounge at LAX but fortunately we had the physical cards the dragon let us in.

TPJ

But this might only affect UA FF members flying TK on reward tickets. If you are TK FF all allowances are honored.

For me lesson learned from this thread (and from the other one about infant ticket issues on LO): if you book award flight on airline other than TK you need to call this airline and ask:

- are all flight segments confirmed (in HK status - see https://www.airliners.net/forum/view...php?t=324595)?

- is e-ticket fine (all segments in OK FOR USE status)?

- is reservation and e-ticket data matching (are they for the same dates/flights)?

All this might save you a lot of problems later...

Stil

Western Airlines has problems for sure, but the difference between them and TK are, they know and acknowledge the problems. With TK I'm not sure they have the corporate ability to pinpoint their structural shortcomings.

Or, they just don't care as money seems to be pouring in, no matter what senior management does or does not.

nacho

IMO the problem lies with their corporate culture.

My issue #1: Family account couldn't be created.

I guess there are some issues with the lovely Scandinavian style of birth and marriage certificate and TK can't handle them, so they left it in a pile and not to process my family account application. I called and called until I found a person who seemed to be English speaking (at least high level) to understand my issues and was able to move on with the process.

Issue #2 - TK IT "upgrade" downgraded all of us from E to CP:

In this case, the TK staff has 110% confident in the accuracy with their new IT system that computer said we are classic plus, then we are classic plus. TK CS wouldn't even bother reading an excel sheet that I listed all the flights we took and screenshots of our miles statements. I don't know why they didn't. Then screenshots showing that our status are protected worked like a charm.

I learned a bit about Polish culture after dealing with issues during Mr's 2 stays there (110% my experience) - both hotels were extremely defensive when answering the email. It seems that admitting their wrong doing is something you don't do at least in this 2 hotels. I wouldn't be surprised if someone has a service concern and write to LOT - I don't know what kind of response they will get.

I don't think customer satisfaction is a goal in TK's corporate culture. I think to them, they offer a product - written clearly in the homepage, you pay for it and they provide it, what more do you ask for?

TPJ

I am not sure what LO has to do with TK issues with partner award bookings, but IMHO:

- EU261 works reasonably well with LO,
- shaming LO on social media brings good results (as evidenced by the recent BJS reward ticket issues) - I have a feeling this strategy would not work with TK.

Sorry for OT'ing.