My Cardinal Airline Rule -- proved once more.
 

On a recent trip to IND to visit family, my husband was taken ill. We needed to delay our return flight until he could recover. I phoned NW (the New Delta) airline to ask the details for changing our early flight to a later one. Keeping in mind that NW flies 5 flights a day from IND to our home town (none of which were full) and both DH and I are NW Elite flier, I was told that the cost to change would be $150 per person. The agent was steadfast that there was absolutely no way around this change fee. I thanked her, hung up and reconsidered.

Second phone call to NW, same day. The agent <u>offered</u> to put us on a flight the next day, said she could waive the change fee (something that according to her they usually do for the first rebooking) and said we could always stand-by for a flight on the same day as travel for no change penalty.

As it turned out, we rebooked for the last flight of the next day, went to the airport early to stand-by (and got on) an earlier flight and were even upgraded to FC.

So here's my point.......why didn't the first agent inform me of, at least, the option of standing by without penalty? I asked that specific question -- "can we go on the last flight out tonight without penalty?". She said "no".

I've had this sort of encounter over and over and over again with airline reservation agents. My whole family and all my friends have memorized my "Cardinal Airline Rule" whether it is changing an existing ticket or booking a new one --<u> if you don't like the first answer you get, hang up, call back and ask again.</u>

I'll second that, has worked for me.

regards - tom

I use this rule everywhere, and it always p!$$es me off when I get misinformation, or no information from people who are supposed to help me, the customer who is always right!

It's not only airlines - hotels, banks, insurances, you name it! Any corporation where there is at least one middle person between the owner and who answers the phone, that's it, they don't give a damn!

With the airline....I'm not so sure they don't care as much as the system and rules are so complicated that no one (not even the people who work there) can make sense of it. I just keep asking until someone interprets the rule in my favor.

My rule is more generalizable: The intelligence of an organization is inversely proprtional to its size.

And why does an agent have to ask someone else whether something can be done? The computer can be taught the rules, and when a CSR wants to do something, s/he can simply try it, and the system will tell him/her it can/can't be done - and if not, why.

As things stand, they get a cryptic error code that refers the user to the appropriate passage in <u>The Manual</u>. When I was a Systems Analyst at AA in the '70s, I suggested that the entire process of updating, printing, and disseminating 15,000 copies of <u>The Manual</u> two or three times a month could easily be finessed with a few hours of a clerk's time updating <u>The Online Manual</u>. Thirty years hence, and nothing has changed AFAIK. Except the number of copies has probably doubled.

But, surely, the manual is online. It is just the software, that pops up the cryptic code, doesn't know what is in the manual.

TC, Your Cardinal Airline Rule = My New Cardinal Airline Rule.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11834256-post446.html
and
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/11939618-post447.html

Glad it worked for you, Orlando-Vic. You can bang your head against a stone wall forever or you can keep looking until you find a gate. I've been pretty lucky finding someone who will open the gate when I need it. They are more often than not, working late at night.