Whats wrong with AA India call centre?

[Dave Noble]

Question....I have been faxing Sydney, but have not received any reply regarding receipt or credit card being charged.....

Is there anyway to check?

If you phone them, the booking should iirc be updated to say that the fax has been received

Dave

 

[vt]

thanks....I guess they have not received my fax as yet....

That is good, just found out I need to move some of the flights

 

[MatthewRob]

Tried calling the Indian call centre twice today to book my LONE4. First the agent told me I should do it online! This already said to me, he didn't want to do it or had no clue. Then when I was on my second sector the line clicks and hangs up.

So I try again. The next agent wasn't that great, basically I just told her flight number and date and she punched the machine...this time on my last sector, the line clicks and hangs up.

Just really annoying. I wish I could book this thing online! I know what I want, which fare class it has to be in and would save both me and the AA agents much time.

 

[Keith009]

Tried calling the Indian call centre twice today to book my LONE4. First the agent told me I should do it online! This already said to me, he didn't want to do it or had no clue. Then when I was on my second sector the line clicks and hangs up.

So I try again. The next agent wasn't that great, basically I just told her flight number and date and she punched the machine...this time on my last sector, the line clicks and hangs up.

Just really annoying. I wish I could book this thing online! I know what I want, which fare class it has to be in and would save both me and the AA agents much time.

xONEx itineraries can be organised through the AA ATW desk in the US regardless of where the itinerary commences. Tell them you're purchasing it in Australia so that reflects in the fare when the itinerary gets sent to Dublin for fare calculation. Then when you're ready to pay just call the Australian number and give them the reloc. You might need to call up AA Australia to extend the tkt time limit - now I have no idea what their process is for this but the AA GSA in CMB was more than happy to extend the time limit (including the one Cathay imposed for their segments) till a month before departure when I produced evidence that I'm actually going to travel and not just making a speculative booking.

 

[Tiki]

The ATW desk in the USA won't budge on the ticket time limit, so unless you plan to ticket within 21 days I wouldn't use them. They were even nasty enough to put a note in the PNR so any other AA office wouldn't extend the time limit. I don't have status and I have seen how others on this board get around the USA office so there may be exceptions.

I had no problem booking with the ICC. (second booking after first one expired) I gave them the dates, flights I wanted and the lady just booked it and I pulled it up on AA.com while she waited. She somehow managed to give me the correct ticket time limit and sent the PNR to the Dublin office for faring.

All in all, I actually preferred dealing with the Indians as I felt they were much more customer service orientated than the US or UK.

 

[QF WP]

What's wrong with the AA India (Dehli) call centre - wouldn't it be simpler to say what's right :evil: .

I needed to make some changes to a reservation booked via AA.com last week - had bought a K class, just needed to do a date and flight change. CSR confirmed 3 times my requirements during the call - I'm sorry, by the third time I was losing my cool...

CSR gave some excuse about needing to contact her supervisor to re-validate and she would ring me back tomorrow. I was waiting on this to be done, so I could snaffle the U2 seats showing on the flight.

Well, the next morning I looked on AA.com and the flight details had changed, so I was able to ring QF and use my points to secure U seats. Finally got a call from CSR at 4pm to sa she had made the change - well, I knew that about 6 hours ago

I am loathe to ring the AA SYD number, will ring UK or US instead, no matter how much more it'll cost me, at least I'll be understood the first time and get my request actioned.

 

[MatthewRob]

I would seriously reconsider booking direct with AA again. I seem to have had nothing but problems trying to pay for it. I did the itinerary through the US ATW desk as trying the Indian desk resulted in the line being dropped twice and having to repeat my self 3 times to be understood. So on Friday I go to pay and find out that it had been priced in Euros, not in A$, so will have to call back in 24 hours. I said I didn't think they were open on Saturdays and the booking expires on Sunday "Oh no sir, we are definitely open tomorrow" Are you sure? "Oh yes sir." So I call back Saturday, recorded announcement "We are open Mon-Fri..." I was so annoyed. Called the US desk who told me it couldn't be extended further as the non-AA airlines wouldn't allow it to be held more than 21 days before flight. She rebooked it, except now one of the flights wasn't available (annoying how they couldn't transfer my held seat over).

Called the Indian desk to pay (line dropped several times again) and still waiting for the faxback sheet! I wish the US desk could issue the sheets and they could close the Indian office!

 

[Tiki]

What the US ATW office told you about the flights with other airlines can't be held more than 21 days is a load of cough! I booked my trip with the Indians in Dec and didn't pay until April. The AA Starfile specifies 21 days PRIOR to departure but they seem to interpret it incorrectly. To get around this, they need to put "Ticketed" in the ticket time limit field instead of an expiry date. The US office won't go the extra mile to do this, the Indians will. This probably isn't an issue to many of the people who post here because they have the ability to pay straight away, but in my case I needed 4 months to save up for the tickets.

BTW, if they hadn't done this for me when they did, I would have lost one of my segments as L class was fully sold out when I looked on the KVS availability tool in April.

 

[NM]

This issue with 21 day holding seems really strange to me. I booked a DONE4 through our corp travel agent back in mid-April. They use Sabre for the original booking and issue the ticket through Qantas. This itinerary was held for about 28 days so far without any hint or mention of a time limit. During the time the booking has been active I have made a few flight and even routing changes - all no problem.

So why can't AA hold a OneWorld Explorer booking for more than 21 days and ensure all the other airline's sectors remain active?

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

Strange to me too. My DONE5 last year was booked for several months before ticketing (I was hoping to get JNB-LHR to clear waitlist but eventually gave up and rerouted while I still could get availability via Asia).

 

[Dave Noble]

What the US ATW office told you about the flights with other airlines can't be held more than 21 days is a load of cough!

No it is not. With CX definitely, when the reservation is held by AA on CX, the CX system returns a message ( which ends up in the PNR records ) "Supply ticket number by xx/xx/xx or reservation subject to cancel" . The period it grants is about 21 days and CX *does* delete such reservations, I have seen it happen to held bookings

Also recently, CX have modified their systems to pick up the use of "dummy" ticket numbers which some agents have been using to try and circumvent this

Dave

 

[NM]

No it is not. With CX definitely, when the reservation is held by AA on CX, the CX system returns a message ( which ends up in the PNR records ) "Supply ticket number by xx/xx/xx or reservation subject to cancel" . The period it grants is about 21 days and CX *does* delete such reservations, I have seen it happen to held bookings

Also recently, CX have modified their systems to pick up the use of "dummy" ticket numbers which some agents have been using to try and circumvent this

Dave

My DONE4 has 4 CX flights included and they did not cancel my reservation when no ticket number was issued after 28 days. Maybe they only take that hard line with AA bookings?

 

[Keith009]

I've had that CX msg in my reservation booked by AA. The CX limit is actually 14 days I think, but AA's oneworld liaison will extend the CX limit to 21 days to bring the whole thing in line with AA's own limit.

When I questioned an AAgent about the inconsistency of the ticketing time limit with that of the Starfile, I was told that the fare rules also give each carrier the right to protect revenue as they see fit and the '21 days prior to departure' limit in the Starfile is interpreted as the "absolute minimum" and anything else can be tagged on. I thought the revenue protection clause only applies to the airlines mucking around with the L/D/A buckets but I didn't know it extends to ticketing time limits. :evil:

If booked exCMB, the AA GSA there will extend the time limit quite substantially, and they will liaise with CX to extend CX's limit once you produce evidence that you're actually intending to pay and not making a speculative booking. Thankfully the original limit set by CMB remained when I changed my booking to exNRT as, like Tiki I need time to save up to pay for the ticket.

Just wondering though - do bookings made with CX directly also get a similar time limit? If the CX fuel fines are not too hefty (certainly wont be as bad as QF/BA!) I don't mind booking with CX if AA will not hold my booking in future. I've heard good things about booking DONEs with CX.

 

[Tiki]

I was purposely avoiding CX because they don't gave any miles or points for L class if you are crediting to AA.

 

[tscharke]

just made my 1st dom award booking (ADL-SYD) and didnt realise there was a USD100 fee for bookings made less than 21 days (that will teach me to not read the fine print!!!) - so the ticket ended up costing me over half the cost of a purchased ticket and 20k AA points.........not the smartest move I've made

 

[Kiwi Flyer]

ouch, still it could be worse (at least ADL-SYD is zone 2, if it was zone 1 then would be less QFF points for the award also)

 

[Keith009]

just made my 1st dom award booking (ADL-SYD) and didnt realise there was a USD100 fee for bookings made less than 21 days (that will teach me to not read the fine print!!!) ...

:shock:

And you didn't think to forgo the award and buy a red edeal instead at that point of realisation? :-|

edited to add - hope i don't sound too harsh...

 

[tscharke]

:shock:

And you didn't think to forgo the award and buy a red edeal instead at that point of realisation? :-|

i justified it by having aa points to spare along with the fact that i have already forked out enough $$$ this month in airfares for the family therefore that extra little cash in the pocket will be handy......

edit:: hehe! nah not too harsh mate

 

[Alan in CBR]

Also recently, CX have modified their systems to pick up the use of "dummy" ticket numbers which some agents have been using to try and circumvent this

That's pretty rich! CX in CMB routinely supplied dummy ticket numbers to AA because they (CX) would only ticket a booking a couple of days prior to travel. I guess they think it's OK for them to do it to AA, but not OK for AA to do it to them.

 

[tscharke]

OMG!

i just attempted to make a simple award booking SYD-ADL......:evil:

apart from being disconnected 4 times mid conversation I basically had to provide information, more than once, for identity security measures that would make any bank security measures look pathetic .

It was like pulling teeth..... wow! after that I need a beer and its only 1pm