I spent a frustrating evening yesterday trying to bypass my Singapore travel agent (since the office was closed for chinese new year) to book a return flight from Seoul to Tokyo. After 3 or 4 hours I managed:
- Not to find a booking form on ANA website as hard as I looked.
- Realise that United return flight would make me spend a night in the Seoul airport or hotel somewhere, since my SQ back to Singapore is 1935.
- Sign up for Asiana frequent flyer programme - the only way it would let me book a flight between ICN and NRT. After wasting a whole lot of time I eventually managed to get as far as the booking page just to find out there were no seats on return flights
- Sign up for Korean Air frequent flyer as well. Again, the proverbials would not let me book a flight until I signed up. Eventually I did find the appropriate flights, but they do not accept AMEX for overseas card bookings. What's more they do not accept an "unverified" Visa card, and there is nothing on NAB site that helped me to verify it
- In desperation I decided to return to Singapore from Seoul (at 1 am or something) in order to catch 6 am NWA flight to Narita. After all NW had amasing specials on their website, SGD 427 all inclusive, SIN-NRT-SIN. No problems getting the cheap flight but when I proceeded to book it told me that in the time it took me to click the mouse that fare was no longer available for the flight I requested and it would be 730 (Still cheaper than 800+ for ICN-NRT on KE or OZ). I logged out and put in +/- 3 days. Yet again it gave me a whole week of $427 flights as available, including the original flight, and yet again not a single one of them was 427 when I clicked a second later.
By that stage I was ready to throw the computer through the window. This was more frustrating than trying to redeem a QF economy ticket 6 months in advance!
Why cannot the airlines make it easy to make online bookings, e.g. like UA, SQ and QF websites?
9 am today I was on the phone to my travel agent who for a $40 fee saved my computer and a whole lot of hair.
- Not to find a booking form on ANA website as hard as I looked.
- Realise that United return flight would make me spend a night in the Seoul airport or hotel somewhere, since my SQ back to Singapore is 1935.
- Sign up for Asiana frequent flyer programme - the only way it would let me book a flight between ICN and NRT. After wasting a whole lot of time I eventually managed to get as far as the booking page just to find out there were no seats on return flights
- Sign up for Korean Air frequent flyer as well. Again, the proverbials would not let me book a flight until I signed up. Eventually I did find the appropriate flights, but they do not accept AMEX for overseas card bookings. What's more they do not accept an "unverified" Visa card, and there is nothing on NAB site that helped me to verify it
- In desperation I decided to return to Singapore from Seoul (at 1 am or something) in order to catch 6 am NWA flight to Narita. After all NW had amasing specials on their website, SGD 427 all inclusive, SIN-NRT-SIN. No problems getting the cheap flight but when I proceeded to book it told me that in the time it took me to click the mouse that fare was no longer available for the flight I requested and it would be 730 (Still cheaper than 800+ for ICN-NRT on KE or OZ). I logged out and put in +/- 3 days. Yet again it gave me a whole week of $427 flights as available, including the original flight, and yet again not a single one of them was 427 when I clicked a second later.
By that stage I was ready to throw the computer through the window. This was more frustrating than trying to redeem a QF economy ticket 6 months in advance!
Why cannot the airlines make it easy to make online bookings, e.g. like UA, SQ and QF websites?
9 am today I was on the phone to my travel agent who for a $40 fee saved my computer and a whole lot of hair.
