I called yesterday to add sectors to an existing classic flight award.
I have a strong suspicion the agent was both HBA based and new. She was having a shocker.
First she accidentally hung up on me.
When she called back she was very flustered. She admitted having to ask a colleague what to do. “Just call him back”.. was his wise advice.
As I was (optimistically) booking TYO - BNE I gave her the specific flight numbers because I wanted a NRT departure.
She read back the flight details correctly.
But then she quoted the incorrect number of points, which I queried and she corrected.
Her quote for taxes was also extremely low, but I was happy with that. But it should have rung the alarm bells for me.
A few mins after completing the call I checked the App and she had deleted an earlier sector in my itinerary, hence the lower than expected taxes.
And just to cap things off she booked me on a flight ex. NHD much later than I wanted and not the flight ex. NRT that I requested and she read back.
People have bad days. I get it. And if she was new that’s added pressure.
But the thing that annoyed me most was that even though I called back within 15 mins, the flights I wanted were gone.
The agent trying to fix it was also in HBA and very apologetic. But there seemed no willingness to send it to the OW helpdesk to be corrected as it was a QF error.
I contemplated asking them to pull the tape and accommodate me on the service I requested at their expense.
But I took a breath...
I reflected on just how many cranky people the QF call centre staff must be dealing with lately...
And decided to cut them some slack.
So, in the unlikely event we’re back travelling by Jan 2022, I’ll be in the HND lounge, not NRT.
<first world problem emoji goes here>