I managed to book some reward flights today, first ones since the change to dynamic pricing. I was on the phone a total of 2h 5mins with about 45m of that on hold initially!
We normally fly UC/UC or UC/PE but the points required to Vegas are just insane so decided on PE/EC that was reasonably priced when I looked online - 52k points c£920 in tax for 2 pax with a voucher. Agent was clearly struggling with how to price it from the outset, it seemed they have to put it in the system as EC both ways initially and then add the voucher. But it wouldn’t let her get the price because there were apparently not enough points in my account, so she had to do some workaround to get the price. Which for EC both ways came back at 600k points!! So in the hour odd it had taken to get to this stage, it had gone up from 36k to 600k, crazy. Checked myself online and that is indeed what it is now pricing at.
So then she tries to add the voucher (which is pointless by now as not paying that many points) but the system won’t allow it because PE is less points than EC! No problem I give her an alternate set of dates which I’ve checked online in the meantime still pricing decent. Takes a while for her to re-set up the transaction and same thing happens again, should be 60k base, she quotes me 123k!
A third set of dates and we’re nearly there, base price is coming back at 60k before she adds the voucher and I’m put on hold again while she checks something. After a while one of the team leader picks me back up and is saying something like 92k points, so I ask for the breakdown as I’m getting 60k. It sounds like they have to manually calculate the difference between the EC and PE price on the outbound leg, to work out how many points are required to use from the voucher, and then deduct that off the total initial points required. I think he’d picked up the return flight price instead but he refreshes and we get back to the 60k I’m expecting. Then once they’ve worked out how many points are required to use from your voucher they credit those amount of points to your account, and charge your account with the full amount it would have been without the voucher, so the net deduction is correct. We finally complete the transaction!
This isn’t a complaint about the call centre staff at all, I felt awful for them both, it sounds like an absolute nightmare with the new system. If it took me over an hour of talking to someone to book one set of flights, no wonder the hold times to get through are so long!
We normally fly UC/UC or UC/PE but the points required to Vegas are just insane so decided on PE/EC that was reasonably priced when I looked online - 52k points c£920 in tax for 2 pax with a voucher. Agent was clearly struggling with how to price it from the outset, it seemed they have to put it in the system as EC both ways initially and then add the voucher. But it wouldn’t let her get the price because there were apparently not enough points in my account, so she had to do some workaround to get the price. Which for EC both ways came back at 600k points!! So in the hour odd it had taken to get to this stage, it had gone up from 36k to 600k, crazy. Checked myself online and that is indeed what it is now pricing at.
So then she tries to add the voucher (which is pointless by now as not paying that many points) but the system won’t allow it because PE is less points than EC! No problem I give her an alternate set of dates which I’ve checked online in the meantime still pricing decent. Takes a while for her to re-set up the transaction and same thing happens again, should be 60k base, she quotes me 123k!
A third set of dates and we’re nearly there, base price is coming back at 60k before she adds the voucher and I’m put on hold again while she checks something. After a while one of the team leader picks me back up and is saying something like 92k points, so I ask for the breakdown as I’m getting 60k. It sounds like they have to manually calculate the difference between the EC and PE price on the outbound leg, to work out how many points are required to use from the voucher, and then deduct that off the total initial points required. I think he’d picked up the return flight price instead but he refreshes and we get back to the 60k I’m expecting. Then once they’ve worked out how many points are required to use from your voucher they credit those amount of points to your account, and charge your account with the full amount it would have been without the voucher, so the net deduction is correct. We finally complete the transaction!
This isn’t a complaint about the call centre staff at all, I felt awful for them both, it sounds like an absolute nightmare with the new system. If it took me over an hour of talking to someone to book one set of flights, no wonder the hold times to get through are so long!
