Well, good morning from a busy clubhouse!
Just finished breakfast and thought I’d share a story…
There’s been a number of threads recently about issues calculating upgrade “taxes”. Specifically from premium to upper. Something I often contribute on as it’s something I do extremely regularly.
On todays flight, they were selling 3 more J tickets this morning. The app showed an upgrade price of £949 (no thank you). But I thought, fantastic, clubhouse concierge can do a points upgrade for me as normal. Something I’ve done dozens of times. 2 seats left in upper, and 1G blocked as usual.
Two concierge agents on the desk. One very new and junior one, and another that’s been there years (someone that knows me by face and I get on well with).
Junior chap calls ticketing. Mistakenly calls ticketing desk downstairs rather than GTS. They quote £140 ish plus 40,000 points for the upgrade (USA west coast flight). That’s wrong. Per the sheet they have in the clubhouse plus the upgrade table on the website.
We politely put the phone down because we’re getting nowhere with him.
Consult the clubhouse sheets. £230 YQ and 38,700. Also wrong, YQ is £330 at the moment but their sheet is from 2022. Clubhouse manager says call GTS to ensure it’s correct.
Phone GTS, they say 40,000 points plus £330. Almost right. Argue the toss on the points. Won’t budge. Then they say “oh that seats not available for upgrade anymore”. I’m thinking someone at check in has leap frogged me because of all the farting about. Not a happy chappy now.
Continued to push back because I figured there was confusion between “blocked seat” and “unavailable for upgrade”.
Called a different GTS agent and started fresh.
Finally taxes and points taken (incorrect points, but we can fix that later). And new boarding pass issued. Only took 25 minutes.
Even the Clubhouse manager and senior concierge agent said “this is ridiculous”. And they thought it was hilarious that there was a customer schooling GTS on their own job. (I took over the phone to try and speed up the process).
Moral of the story…
If you think something isn’t right, push back.
4 different agents said different things. Clubhouse concierge were brilliant, but even they sometimes don’t know the true answers. Their paperwork is out of date for some reason. Although I did collect some pictures for my inevitable chat about YQ with customer service (probably a lost cause).
I expect I’m being quoted 40,000 for the upgrade because they’ve changed the rates but haven’t announced publicly. (Website still says the correct numbers). Not that it matters because one hand clearly isn’t talking to the other. I’ll call up next week and query why the website says on thing but someone “mistakenly” took more points
Finally. Get to the airport early if you want to do any kind of upgrade. Someone almost got that seat that I got if it wasn’t for me being early AND pushing back on the clearly incorrect information.
On the subject of YQ. It’s costing more than the reward YQ in total when doing upgrades as they’re using fixed fees rather than difference in YQ as it was in the past.
Well. That’s my morning. Out.
Just finished breakfast and thought I’d share a story…
There’s been a number of threads recently about issues calculating upgrade “taxes”. Specifically from premium to upper. Something I often contribute on as it’s something I do extremely regularly.
On todays flight, they were selling 3 more J tickets this morning. The app showed an upgrade price of £949 (no thank you). But I thought, fantastic, clubhouse concierge can do a points upgrade for me as normal. Something I’ve done dozens of times. 2 seats left in upper, and 1G blocked as usual.
Two concierge agents on the desk. One very new and junior one, and another that’s been there years (someone that knows me by face and I get on well with).
Junior chap calls ticketing. Mistakenly calls ticketing desk downstairs rather than GTS. They quote £140 ish plus 40,000 points for the upgrade (USA west coast flight). That’s wrong. Per the sheet they have in the clubhouse plus the upgrade table on the website.
We politely put the phone down because we’re getting nowhere with him.
Consult the clubhouse sheets. £230 YQ and 38,700. Also wrong, YQ is £330 at the moment but their sheet is from 2022. Clubhouse manager says call GTS to ensure it’s correct.
Phone GTS, they say 40,000 points plus £330. Almost right. Argue the toss on the points. Won’t budge. Then they say “oh that seats not available for upgrade anymore”. I’m thinking someone at check in has leap frogged me because of all the farting about. Not a happy chappy now.
Continued to push back because I figured there was confusion between “blocked seat” and “unavailable for upgrade”.
Called a different GTS agent and started fresh.
Finally taxes and points taken (incorrect points, but we can fix that later). And new boarding pass issued. Only took 25 minutes.
Even the Clubhouse manager and senior concierge agent said “this is ridiculous”. And they thought it was hilarious that there was a customer schooling GTS on their own job. (I took over the phone to try and speed up the process).
Moral of the story…
If you think something isn’t right, push back.
4 different agents said different things. Clubhouse concierge were brilliant, but even they sometimes don’t know the true answers. Their paperwork is out of date for some reason. Although I did collect some pictures for my inevitable chat about YQ with customer service (probably a lost cause).
I expect I’m being quoted 40,000 for the upgrade because they’ve changed the rates but haven’t announced publicly. (Website still says the correct numbers). Not that it matters because one hand clearly isn’t talking to the other. I’ll call up next week and query why the website says on thing but someone “mistakenly” took more points
Finally. Get to the airport early if you want to do any kind of upgrade. Someone almost got that seat that I got if it wasn’t for me being early AND pushing back on the clearly incorrect information.
On the subject of YQ. It’s costing more than the reward YQ in total when doing upgrades as they’re using fixed fees rather than difference in YQ as it was in the past.
Well. That’s my morning. Out.
Fly's a little too much.