Travel agent gone AWOL

[Beachy55]

Does this mean you are still around Alan and still trading? There is hope?

It appears from this the TA found the time to post a long rant that is full of holes and excuses in an attempt to salvage his own reputation, yet still hasn’t found the time to contact an obviously concerned and distressed client ?

The client should be the one to decide if contact is urgent or not, it is their money.

 

[CorporateFlyerMEL]

I thought the same - the first line of response should have been "I have now contacted OP and resolved the commercial issues' - rather than a long rant that would have taken more time to write and post than fixing the original issues...

 

[GrahamBRI]

Not wanting to deny anyone a well earned break, that is clearly the focus of most members of AFF, but in line with that objective, we are just as focused on supporting others through the challenges they have with their travels. Of critical concern here is that when a TA starts “behaving” like an insolvent company, that can be one of the scariest positions for their clients to be in and that needs to be prioritised accordingly. We all know TA insolvency is one of the few uninsurable events (next to act of war).

5. Ticketing passengers who are trying to book a time limited sale fare.

The prioritising of revenue through new / future bookings gives both a reason to be concerned around TA insolvency and a clear indication that, despite your historic great work, you currently have your customer priorities wrong.

 

[Quickstatus]

2 issues

1) Managing client expectations

Managing client expectations is one of critical aspects of providing a Client facing service and successful client management is an ongoing task
No doubt some clients have unrealistic expectations and sometimes they are impossible, but it is the Provider's job to align the clients expectation with the ability of the Provider to deliver.

Not responding to multiple calls and emails makes that job very hard because it does not cultivate trust or peace of mind.

I think MR's post was trying to realign the client's expectations to the realities of a Sole Trader business. I do empathise that customers don't have any insight into that. I am also not a TA, but am in a customer facing service industry, and I can say that his post is definitely the wrong way of going about it.

2) The Skill of Delegating
I suspect MR's business model needs to be re-imagined. I don't know enough of MR's office practice to advise directly but there are lots of things that can be done.
One of the most important skills that a lot of Sole Traders have difficulty with, is the ability to Delegate.
We all think that no one else can do a better job, but that is a fallacy.
We then overestimate our abilities, and fail to recognise that others can possess the required capabilities or be trained in it. I think it is called the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Inability to delegate imposes huge costs.
In a sole trader scenario, it bakes in a single point of failure - no one to solve an otherwise simple issue. That is clearly seen here by everyone, where the client is worried that something happened to MR and there is no solution even with the ticket issuer.
The other cost is personal fatigue and mental exhaustion - as alluded to by MR
Cognitive bandwith is limited and the business is at risk of becoming error prone.

The solution is to actually start delegating - despite MR asserting that he can't find anyone like him, it is actually not necessary to find a MR clone. Even someone, who is 20-50% of what MR can do, can be immensely helpful . Start slow, hand off small tasks, then increase as the case might be. Who knows, a good assistant can sometimes transform the office because they can provide a different perspective.

 

[MARTINE]

Does this mean you are still around Alan and still trading? There is hope?

Googling this TA and AFF name brings up a very negative and long narrative on google search. Not good for the business unfortunately

 

[andrewh3]

To be fare to TA, I have enjoyed his insights in the past, but the last 2 weeks have been very stressful and I would never want to repeat. I have now all e-tickets and receipts. I am hoping he will now be able to find the time to arrange cancellations/changes/refunds. Thank you to others for all their support and suggestions for help.

 

[aspro2]

Wow. I'm so shocked by the nature of the response by the TA. All of us who are in business with customers/clients have some modicum of understanding of the importance of customer experience and how to manage issues with our workload enough to prevent a mess like this.

No matter the long defence rant, the fundamental is that if you somehow think that ignoring a customer rather than actually saying something to reassure them is fine (like an autopreply, for goodness sake), then you have somehow misunderstood the fundamentals of customer relations (and reputational self-interest). I'll never be dealing with this guy.

 

[justinbrett]

As a data point, MR is my TA and while he’s been quiet on WhatsApp etc he’s been very responsive to well titled emails where I’ve clearly laid out what I need and by when - as recent as this week.

Legally if you are on QF stock and the funds have gone to QF, your ticket remains valid regardless of what happens to the TA. I can’t speak to the situation of OP but there’s a fair bit of pile on going on in this thread by people who have no business with him.

MR has gone above and beyond for me over the years and his expertise is quite rare - I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to hand my phone over to a check in agent while he’s walked them through how to fix something in their system.

The amount of free advice and assistance he’s given to AFF members over the years shows his character, and frankly I’m appalled at the mud slinging that’s gone on in this thread. He is one guy and when you are his client you go in to that with your eyes open, it’s not a flight centre business he’s running.

 

[Clayton]

This just bears out my comments about 6 pages upstream, that an unfortunate mistake by a TA during the Pandemic for a very expensive cruise booking made 12 months earlier and fully paid 3 months earlier almost cost me $32K . I took notice and have never used a TA again, especially not those without a physical presence, great, verifiable reputation and timeliness to requests.


That lesson has been massively reinforced in this thread.

 

[lovestotravel]

This just bears out my comments about 6 pages upstream, that an unfortunate mistake by a TA during the Pandemic for a very expensive cruise booking made 12 months earlier and fully paid 3 months earlier almost cost me $32K . I took notice and have never used a TA again, especially not those without a physical presence, great, verifiable reputation and timeliness to requests.


That lesson has been massively reinforced in this thread.

The only time I use a TA is where it's going to work out cheaper and/or hotel inclusions.

 

[justinbrett]

Interline between separate tickets is the main reason I use a TA. I recently had a single PNR - 8 ticket - 19 leg trip, all viewable on the QF app including tickets on non partner airlines.

QF / AA codeshares on DONE4s that you can’t do online which maximise your SC and reduce your fuel fines respectively.

Various other industry tricks that save you more than the commission fees - and the ability to offset hotel commission credits to reduce these to zero.

IYKYK.

 

[SeatBackForward]

The only time I use a TA is where it's going to work out cheaper and/or hotel inclusions.

But a good TA does more than just book things you can do yourself online, and there were plenty of clues in MR's post that indicated some of those things

 

[elanshin]

@OP i hope that now that MR has had signs of life your situation will be resolved soon. I understand it's been stressful for you.

I think people here are taking things a little far with some of the generalisations. Those that have worked with MR or received his help already knows what sort of service he provides - one that is honestly way above normal (and often for things the airline won't do for you even if you had booked direct).

I agree that his current choice of triage and response isn't the exact response of what I would've done myself, however as I read the reply, I understood the intent of the post and can sense the weight of trying to do everything yourself as a business owner (in fact I'm on a plane on my way to my honeymoon right now and using my flight time for work).

@madrooster, I believe there are many people on here on AFF that have a reasonable understanding of your situation and can happily offer you advice or help to improve your situation.

As @Quickstatus pointed out there are a few things you may need to learn and there are many of us here who have varying experiencs, that can help you too. Perhaps you need an assistant to help you monitor and organise the inbox - not necessarily action the work, but break it down for you so that you can spend time focusing on the hard bits - maybe teach them how to call the call centres. I will admit the hardest part for me hiring staff is to let go of responsibilities and its something I'm still learning along with my team on how to balance everything.

If you need help, reach out and many of us would happily return the favour from you helping us.

I hope you can learn from this incident and experience into one that helps you improve at what you do rather than a discouraging one.

 

[Gudetama]

QF responded today with apologies but “unable to help cancel, refund, change” and “just need to contact agent”. So no help at all.

I wonder if they have evidence of the agent being active on other bookings or if they contacted him and he confirmed that he's still active.

 

[Quickstatus]

they have evidence of the agent being active on other bookings

post #191

my honeymoon

Congratulations!

assistant

I wonder, what about an AI Agent?

 

[elanshin]

Congratulations!

Thanks - the fun part of travelling to Europe as everyone knows... I'll be on a metal tube for 24h, so doing some work that I deliberately left doable without sms/calls involved.

I wonder, what about an AI Agent?

AI assistant is a possibility but finding the right one is probably trickier (but perhaps someone here on AFF knows of a good solution), but even someone part time that can help monitor communication channels. Effectively doing the "triaging" for you. It can be a grest help to already have things filtered when it reaches you. You also don't have to hand over all the responsibility - I often look over how our support emails responses are or even jump in when I have time and want to deal with support emails.