Dividend Miles Reservatoin Question

[FlyGuyBWI]

As a US employee, I get to hear about anything and everything that goes wrong when a friend or family member deals with US. On of my friends recently tried to redeem Dividend Miles for an award ticket. He tried the website, and couldn't get the reservation to take -- after some work, he discovered that he'd made a mistake with the way he was entering his information and got the reservation made. His problem was that before he discovered his mistake in making the online reservation, he tried to get help from the 800#. Now, the US website showed that the outbound flight he wanted had seats available for award travel (albeit at a 25000 mi rate insead of 12500 mi), but the agent on the phone insisted that there were NO seats available for award travel on that flight. He told them that "I'm looking at your website now, and it shows seats!" He was still told, "No, you have to take a later flight if you want to redeem miles." Now we know that is not true, since he was ultimately able to get the flight he wanted by redeeming miles online. My question is, for those of you in the know, why would the website show -- and allow booking -- on a flight and a reservations agent say that there are simoly no seats. (PS: the ETC showed 109 available seats out of 112 actual seats on that flight -- not that this has anything to do with how many award seats were available).

Just trying to get input from those of you that know a lot more about this than I do, so I can explain what happend. Thanks for any insight you can give!

 

[tadjr]

Inventory is in a state of constant change. I've often had customers ask to book (or while I was trying to reroute) look at a flight that showed full or no seats in a certain class available, only to check a minute later and there were seats showing. This could have been a possibility. Also, the agent might have been looking at the wrong flight/date, etc when they advised them no seats available. I've checked something on the computer and then went to check for someone else only to have the old date stuck (and populate) the mask for what I was asking for now. Had to ignore, cancel and start over to get correct updated info for what I really wanted. Hope this helps some.

 

[FlyGuyBWI]

Thanks, I appreciate your input. My friend was really frustrated to be looking at one thing online, and being told another on the phone. Like I said, ultimately he got the flight he wanted, and the initial problem with online booking was his mistake.

 

[Bambi]

As a US employee, I get to hear about anything and everything that goes wrong when a friend or family member deals with US. On of my friends recently tried to redeem Dividend Miles for an award ticket. He tried the website, and couldn't get the reservation to take -- after some work, he discovered that he'd made a mistake with the way he was entering his information and got the reservation made. His problem was that before he discovered his mistake in making the online reservation, he tried to get help from the 800#. Now, the US website showed that the outbound flight he wanted had seats available for award travel (albeit at a 25000 mi rate insead of 12500 mi), but the agent on the phone insisted that there were NO seats available for award travel on that flight. He told them that "I'm looking at your website now, and it shows seats!" He was still told, "No, you have to take a later flight if you want to redeem miles." Now we know that is not true, since he was ultimately able to get the flight he wanted by redeeming miles online. My question is, for those of you in the know, why would the website show -- and allow booking -- on a flight and a reservations agent say that there are simoly no seats. (PS: the ETC showed 109 available seats out of 112 actual seats on that flight -- not that this has anything to do with how many award seats were available).

Just trying to get input from those of you that know a lot more about this than I do, so I can explain what happend. Thanks for any insight you can give!

Most agents who are trained to look for "mileage saver seats" (the 25k round trip miles) don't think about the fact that a passenger may be willing to pay the higher mileage rate. (premium miles). We have what we call "X" class (which is the 12,500 ea way you see on web) or the "Y" class (which is the 25k ea way you see on web). When we look it up in reservations we have to pull it up in our availability 2 different ways. 95% of the calls are always for the 25,000 round trip miles in coach, therefore, it only comes with experience for reservation agents to remember to look for the higher mileage seats which are usually available(although recently they have even started blocking those during peak travel times). Hope this helps.

 

[Bambi]

There was a glitch that caused a mismatch between the actual inventory and what was displayed on the web page.

Part of this was due to the slowness of the website following the Res Migration. My understanding is the web site and the res software operate in real time so the inventories should be the same.

Calling the 1-800 Web support is a complete waste. Call me and at least you'll speak to someone who speaks English as a first language. The web support people are nothing more than call center staff with the web site in front of them. If you can't make it work and for some reason they can the response is "Well it works for us" Real nice and they wonder why they finish last in the DOT stats.

Actually the majority of the web support is located in Phoenix and they are trained completely on both systems. Many people on the web that do have problems is due to the type of system and its compatibility with our site. see "system requirements" on the bottom of the website). Not to say the site doesn't have its issues at times, however. I do know there have been issues when it comes to codeshare flights with other airlines, however, as a whole it is usually something the person booking it is doing....I do know the new website looks like it's gonna be pretty good..much more user friendly, etc. Hopefully they've delayed it coming out several months so they can get the majority of the bugs worked out!