International reward books farce

[JennyH]

I have been trying to book business class return flights from Melbourne to London. The "helpful" people on the velocity international phone line can't find anything. I can see flights on the website that go London-AbuDhabi-Melbourne-Sydney for my return date, but not terminating in Melbourne. When I tried to ask that if a reward seat was available for the London-Abu Dhabi-Melbourne legs, why did I have to go an another flight to Sydney? They had no answer.

So my options are to book the flight and try and cram everything into my hand luggage, or try and ask them to direct my luggage to Melbourne. Does anyone have any experience with trying to not take all legs of a reward flight?

Jenny

 

[yohy?!]

sounds like there is no availability for the dates you want which is pretty par for the course if you arent booking a long way in advance. is there availability on SQ to go via SIN?

not sure what you mean with the question around sydney flights and hand luggage unless its possible to do LHR-AUH-MEL-SYD in which case you would collect your bags in sydney as with any arriving int. to dom. itinerary and recheck them at domestic transfer to MEL.

 

[Daver6]

I have been trying to book business class return flights from Melbourne to London. The "helpful" people on the velocity international phone line can't find anything. I can see flights on the website that go London-AbuDhabi-Melbourne-Sydney for my return date, but not terminating in Melbourne. When I tried to ask that if a reward seat was available for the London-Abu Dhabi-Melbourne legs, why did I have to go an another flight to Sydney? They had no answer.

So my options are to book the flight and try and cram everything into my hand luggage, or try and ask them to direct my luggage to Melbourne. Does anyone have any experience with trying to not take all legs of a reward flight?

Jenny

Wouldn't you need to collect your luggage in Melbourne anyway to clear customs? Problem solved

 

[smit0847]

I find the international award bookings call centre pretty useless. It took me 55 minutes to book a reward flight that was showing available as two separate awards but couldn’t be booked as one ticket. The woman even said to me ‘I’m very confused by what you’re trying to do here’. They just don’t get that some people know a lot more about routings, timetables, redemptions etc than they do and follow their robotic scripts without really listening to what the customer wants to do or realising why they want to do it.

They seem to have particular difficulty either linking two separate award bookings or changing what can be seen online (in your case, dropping the last leg). You can just drop your last leg as you would need to collect luggage in MEL and recheck anyway.

They do seem to be able to override the system if they escalate it high enough – if they want to put you on hold to ask a supervisor how to do something my advice would be make sure they know what you want to do and before they put you on hold ask them to simply call you back once its done – there’s no point sitting on hold why they try and work it out.

 

[JennyH]

Thanks everyone - glad to have it confirmed that I need to clear customs in Melbourne anyway. Will book and just not get on the last flight. All seems quite ridiculous.

 

[Daver6]

Unsure if there are any implications for you by doing so, but the right thing to do would be to let the airline now in Melbourne that you won't be getting on the final sector to Sydney. Might save the flight from being delayed while they page for you

 

[EUROPA]

I have been told by the call centre in the past (but please double check!) that terminating a multi-leg flight early is ok as long as you advise the check-in of the first leg of your final destination. Have never done it but..

I agree that international rewards bookings are becoming a joke as availability is seriously limited.. This is an area where some kind of extra rewards booking benefit for plat/gold would be very well received..

 

[jpk]

About 6 months ago the award availability on this route (which I look at all the time) severely dried up for all future dates. There's not as much available on the EY codes either, so I suspect it's just tighter revenue management from EY.

The call centre is a joke, although that said I had to phone the EY call centre last night to select seats on a business class booking, and that experience made the offshore VA call centre look good!

In the OPs case I would just walk off at Melbourne, if it's the last sector you need to take.

 

[mooingchicken]

just don't book syd-melb-uk (or where ever) and think you can just rock up in melb and catch that flight, you might find the whole ticket gets cancelled as they deam you a no show. doing end of trips is quiet common in the US. and is referred to as hidden city ticketing

 

[Deleted member 29185]

I agree that international rewards bookings are becoming a joke as availability is seriously limited.. This is an area where some kind of extra rewards booking benefit for plat/gold would be very well received..

There is the guaranteed economy reward for gold (domestic) and plat (international)......won't do the OP much good though (and it does have some limitations in the T&Cs)!

 

[lovestotravel]

I agree that international rewards bookings are becoming a joke as availability is seriously limited.. This is an area where some kind of extra rewards booking benefit for plat/gold would be very well received..

LOL LOL LOL

Guess you haven't tried to book anything on Qantas then.....

There are seats available to London and most other European cities that Etihad fly to and Los Angeles with only a few weeks notice and NOT having to book 12 months out

 

[EUROPA]

LOL LOL LOL

Guess you haven't tried to book anything on Qantas then.....

There are seats available to London and most other European cities that Etihad fly to and Los Angeles with only a few weeks notice and NOT having to book 12 months out

Not in J rewards... very limited..

 

[lovestotravel]

Not in J rewards... very limited..

Rubbish - Heaps of J seats to the USA and Europe, 2 on most days in fact

 

[jpk]

There are seats available to London and most other European cities that Etihad fly to and Los Angeles with only a few weeks notice and NOT having to book 12 months out

Rubbish - Heaps of J seats to the USA and Europe, 2 on most days in fact

I just searched for MEL/SYD/BNE-LHR over the next 2 months, and there's only 2 seats available on EY (MEL-LHR on 11th May). Searched on both VA and EY sites.

(Also a small smattering of over priced SQ options, most via PER)