Being placed on hold...

Am I the only person who gets placed on hold for periods of up to (and sometimes exceeding) 20 minutes when calling VS? I am not talking about the queue time, which is usually small; I am talking about what happens when you make a simple request like changing the date of a flight, and you then get 20 minutes of Elton John... and eventually you get an answer to your question which you know is incorrect (thanks to v-flyer |:) ) so the whole cycle repeats itself.

I hate to be specific but this does tend to happen much more often when you get routed to the Swansea call centre.

What is going on? Calculating fare differences isn't done by abacus. The rules may be extensive but they are not fundamentally complicated in logical terms. Why can't a computer spit out the right answer (or a reasonable attempt at one!) straight away?

Or are the agents taking multiple calls and juggling them using these long hold times? I ask this not because I am cynical, but because occasionally when I am reconnected the agent has quoted details of different people's bookings back to me! :0

[mitchja]

I've never experienced this with VS, but Sky TV/Broadband are a class act at doing this though (and they usually end up cutting you off too!!)

Most call centres do set numbers of calls answered targets (rather an actual call quality targets) so I guess they are simply trying to answer as many calls as possible in the shortest time.

Get them to call you back. If they do ask to put you on hold, simply say no. That's what I do.

I have a great suspicion that VS's computer systems are abacuses and string and rubber bands. For example I'm not at all certain that the booking system is integrated with the payments system ... which is why it sometimes takes days for a CC charge to be actually made and an eticket be sent. In fact, I think the commerce system is someone punching numbers into one of those hand held devices ): .

I agree, on the occasion that I have to call, these waits are very irritating for seemingly everyday requests ...

I think you are right, slinky, about the separation of the booking and ticketing. When I ring to change flights, it seems that notes are added to the booking and a payment amount and method agreed, and then it gets sent to ticketing and if you are lucky they issue a fresh ticket overnight and take the payment.

In the past this process has failed several times and I've called up to chase the new ticket (to forestall OLCI problems), but not everyone would know to do this (or even that they should be sent a new ticket). On one occasion the agent said, "oh the ticketing dept is really strict" -- turned out that the miles hadn't been deducted for an upgrade by the booking agent, so ticketing had refused to ticket the booking. But neither dept was going to do anything about it! Had I not chased it, at my own expense and after another 15 min hold, the error would only have been rectified at the ticket desk in LHR! v(