Asia Miles - extremely slow!

[james.reid]

Hi Everyone,

My wife and I are trying to book a flight from DME to LHR using our Asia Miles points for us and our two children.

We're trying to do a combined booking, so doing it via the Asia Miles website is not possible (only works if each of us makes a separate booking).

I've tried calling Asia Miles, but as far as I can tell this is more just a service for leaving your name and phone number, where they will call you back in a few days (and if you miss the call then you have to start all over again)

I'm currently doing the booking via email, but this is painfully slow - you email them, wait a few days, get an email back (which today simply asked whether my children were mail or female) and then wait a few more days.

Calling Cathay Pacific in Australia is useless for talking about Asia Miles - they advise that they are not able to do anything as it is all run out of Hong Kong.

Does anyone know any alternative email addresses or phone numbers that I can call at Asia Miles so that I can get this finalized quickly? Based on current speed it looks like it will take another 2 weeks to complete the booking.

Thanks!
James.

 

[33evelyn]

Great question! Sorry to say I have no answer but have also been going crazy trying to communicate with Asia Miles. (I'm trying to travel from USA to Adelaide using miles through Cathay Pacific.) Good luck with your planning and please let me know or post any tips you come up with about how to work with Asia Miles. Thanks.

 

[james.reid]

Ok...

What I've established so far is:
1. Asia Miles is run as a totally disconnected entity from Cathay Pacific... you can call Cathay Pacific, but the most that they can do is send an internal email to Asia Miles asking that them to contact you. The best that you can do is ask them to ask Asia Miles to call you at a set date and time (which does not necessarily get honored)

2. You can't email Asia Miles. They can email you, but only from a one-way mail box (ie you can't reply to it)

3. You can fax them, but it's of no use unless you contact them via some other means and ask them to process the fax (I had to fax them a passport... took 2 phone calls and a wait of 20 mins for someone to sift through what sounded like 100s of faxes to find mine)

4. I live in Melbourne (Australia) which is on a similar time zone to Hong Kong... sometimes I've had more success getting through to Asia Miles on the phone by calling early in the evening

5. If you do manage to get through, stay on the line until you are satisfied that your entire request has been completed... if they say that they will complete it later then ask them to do it "now" while you wait... with all due respect to the operators who work at Asia Miles (who I believe are doing their very best in an extremely trying environment) if they say that they will do it later then it simply does not happen - you'll end up having to call them back.

6. Ultimately, Asia Miles seem to have lost the plot... they've set up a call center which is simply far to small for the number of customers that it needs to serve, to the point of it being rendered useless, and customers not being able to make tangible use of their points (*** unless they have very simple requirements that can be met by the Asia Miles web site ***)

My strong recommendation is to try to use up the points that anyone has collected with Asia Miles, and to then get rid of the card - better off using one of the many other One World partner cards.

James.

 

[kchika]

As a Diamond member, I've never had to wait for more than 5 seconds for a CSO to pick up my call after entering my membership number.

And yes, the Asia Miles call centre is outsourced to PCCW.

My advice is to call Asia Miles after midnight but before 7am (HKG time).

 

[33evelyn]

Thank you vey much for your detailed information. I agree -- Asia Miles semms ill equiped to deal with any but the most routine of customer needs.

That said -- I did manage to contact them by email -- look on the site for a place called "feed back." It took them 7 days to reply, and then my question was not answered. I wrote back and asked my question again -- the site allowed me to reply. Will see what happenes. (I'm not hopeful.)

I could not find a telephone number on the site -- I'm in the USA. Maybe there is no phone contact from here?