Travel Guru said:
With all due respect NM, as someone who has worked as an agent for many years, and who now owns a very profitable agency among several business interests, I found your comments regarding the TA being lazy, incompetent and arrogant to be both ignorant and offensive.
I am sorry to have offended you - that was not my intent. I was not aiming my rant solely at the Travel Agent involved, but more squarely at the Ticketing Agent at the airline.
Could you offer another suggested bullet point to add to my list of options? I would be very happy to consider any other options.
I was perhaps using the term "agent" a little more loosely than you have understood my intent. I guess my rant was more aimed at the QF Ticketing Agent at Qantas Industry Sales (or perhaps multiple of them as its likely different people were contacted by both the Travel Agent and the QF Reservations Supervisor each time) that refused to issue the ticket due to it supposedly being invalid, without actually checking the rules under which it was being deemed invalid were actually accurate - even after being prompted multiple times by the TA and QF reservations (via the phone call from Homer himself).
I do understand that the Travel Agent cannot issue the ticket without the correct authority from the airline (I have been through this with my own tickets on a few occasions about different circumstances).
Travel Guru said:
I don't think you appreciate the limitations placed on agents by airlines such as QF, and although I can't speak for the agent in question, I do know that if an agent checks with an airline like QF only to be told no, short of taking it up with the airlines rep, there's little they can do.
Yes, I think I do understand the ticketing limitations. I would, however, hope that when the customer (Homer in this case) specifically asked his TA to verify the rule, that the TA would be able to look it up and check for themselves (as my corporate TA does), and then take up the challenge with the QF Industry Ticketing Dept (I assume acting as the consolidator in this case).
So if the ticketing agency claims its invalid, and the TA knows it is valid, I would hope the TA would be able to explain to the ticketing agent, in industry terms that the ticketing agent can understand, about the reasons it is valid.
Travel Guru said:
Very few agents in Australia do their own ticketing, relying instead on consolidators, and unfortunately, even if you know the rules to be incorrect, without an authority from the airlines its near impossible to get something done.
If the TA knows the ticket is valid, I would hope they would be able to convince the ticketing agent of the correct interpretation of the rules. In this case the customer was able to achieve this when his agent was unable to do so.
The brunt of my complaint is against the ticketing agent (consolidator, airline or whoever was refusing to issue the ticket) who determine it was invalid and then refused to actually check to see if the TA who was making the request was actually right. They seem to take the view that they can make whatever arbitrary rulings they like and assume the customer is ignorant and will just give up and go away. I am glad Homer did not give up and go away this time.
Travel Guru said:
I have a great deal of respect for your knowledge, and have read this forum for several years, but I would appreciate if in future you wouldn't confuse the agent and the airlines call centre staff member when it comes to unwillingness to check the rules, and if you wouldn't assume just because you have a fair understanding of airfares that you understand the boundaries within which TA's operate.
I do still believe that a TA should be able to read and understand the fare rules, and if the ticketing agency consolidator, airline etc) gets the rules wrong then I expect the TA to "go in to bat" for me to have the ticketing agency apply the fare rules correctly. If I was dealing with a TA who could not convince the ticketing agency to correctly apply the rules, then I would look for another TA.
Perhaps my expectations are set too high? But in my profession I have learned not to take no for an answer when I know its the wrong answer. If I get response from a vendor that I know is incorrect or inappropriate, I am required to escalate until I get the right response.
Thankfully when I have had problems getting a ticket issued, my TA has gone to great effort to work with the ticketing airline authority to get it sorted out. That is a great relief to me since I don't have a choice of which TA to use for my corporate travel needs. I good Travel Agent is a valuable asset.
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