A few nights ago I purchased some tickets for a trip in December on AA.com. After completing the booking, I printed the itinerary page which stated: "Status: Purchased" and went on to say "Note: This is not your receipt, which is needed for identification purposes at airport check-in. You will receive an itinerary confirmation with your receipt soon." Now in e-commerce speak, "you will receive confirmation soon" usually means "Check your in-box in a sec or two." I got zilch.
About the second day of my vigil I decided to call AA and see if I could figure out what went wrong. After a 30-minute duel with the automated call-routing system I gave up and decided to try the web site again later. So tonight--day 5 of the vigil--I went online and checked out my reservation. To my relief it was still in the system and looked just fine. Buoyed by that good fortune I thought I'd try my luck again at reaching a flesh and blood agent of AA. So I snooped around the site and found the AA.com Web Services number. I was greeted with the same disturbingly happy phone system voice that had cheerfully spurned my advances several nights earlier. Only this time the menu of options she presented actually held out hope of talking to someone. However, my enthusiasm was tempered by the admonition by Trixie (as in "tricksee happy phone voice that keeps our preciousss from usss") to have my AA Advantage number ready to expedite things. I have no such number and will not join their stupid little club to get one. I pushed 2.
Trixie gleefully requested that I enter my AA Advantage number without offering any other option such as "If you're not an AA Advantage member press "x", plebian." Instead she'd wait patiently and ask again, "AA Advantage number please." Apparently, only Advantage members merit answers to questions about their reservations. Finally Trixie suggested that if I forgot my Advantage number to say, "I don't know." Thinking Trixie might be smarter than I knew I said, "I don't have one." "AA Advantage number please," was the reply. Once again Trixie had the upper hand. I hung up in frustration. After a minute or two I decided to call back and play along, so I called Trix back, pushed 2, and answered, "I don't know." Voila! Seconds later a voice, not unlike Trixie's, but bearing the distinctive chill of a human being that hates her job only slightly less than you came on the line. The conversation went something like this:
Rita: (in the voice of someone straining under the burden of a fake smile) "Rita Something-or-Other, American Web Services. May I help you."
About the second day of my vigil I decided to call AA and see if I could figure out what went wrong. After a 30-minute duel with the automated call-routing system I gave up and decided to try the web site again later. So tonight--day 5 of the vigil--I went online and checked out my reservation. To my relief it was still in the system and looked just fine. Buoyed by that good fortune I thought I'd try my luck again at reaching a flesh and blood agent of AA. So I snooped around the site and found the AA.com Web Services number. I was greeted with the same disturbingly happy phone system voice that had cheerfully spurned my advances several nights earlier. Only this time the menu of options she presented actually held out hope of talking to someone. However, my enthusiasm was tempered by the admonition by Trixie (as in "tricksee happy phone voice that keeps our preciousss from usss") to have my AA Advantage number ready to expedite things. I have no such number and will not join their stupid little club to get one. I pushed 2.
Trixie gleefully requested that I enter my AA Advantage number without offering any other option such as "If you're not an AA Advantage member press "x", plebian." Instead she'd wait patiently and ask again, "AA Advantage number please." Apparently, only Advantage members merit answers to questions about their reservations. Finally Trixie suggested that if I forgot my Advantage number to say, "I don't know." Thinking Trixie might be smarter than I knew I said, "I don't have one." "AA Advantage number please," was the reply. Once again Trixie had the upper hand. I hung up in frustration. After a minute or two I decided to call back and play along, so I called Trix back, pushed 2, and answered, "I don't know." Voila! Seconds later a voice, not unlike Trixie's, but bearing the distinctive chill of a human being that hates her job only slightly less than you came on the line. The conversation went something like this:
Rita: (in the voice of someone straining under the burden of a fake smile) "Rita Something-or-Other, American Web Services. May I help you."
Me: (in a slightly relieved, yet tentative is-this-really-a-person voice) "Uh yes. Rita, I booked a flight several---"
Rita: (in a don't-dink-around-you-no-Advantage-number-loser voice) "Give me your record locator please."
Me: "Oh . . . sure it's, er, it's Y-O-M-A-M-A." (I didn't really, but I'm not putting my real record locater code in this blog)
Rita: "OK . . . Mr. Stephens?"
Me: (very relieved kind of happy-you-found-it voice) "Yes! See the itinerary results I printed out said I'd be receiving a confirmation soon. I assumed this would be via e-mail but it's been several days."
Rita: (in a thinly veiled you-lowlife voice) "That's because the card was declined."
Me: "Well that card has a low limit and I'd just sent the payment before I booked the flight, so maybe it simply hadn't had time to post yet. I just don't understand why the system didn't just tell me. It gave me a printout that says 'Status: Purchased'."
Rita: (in a try-to-stay-with-me-while-I-explain-retard voice) "Yes, well if the reservation is far enough out it will put it on hold and keep trying the card until it goes through."
Me: "It couldn't just tell me right away declined? I could have used another card. Can I just give you another card number?"
Rita: "If you want to use another card, you can give the number to me and we'll add a $10 reservation service surcharge to the ticket. Or you can go back to the Web site and enter it yourself."
Me: "So, my reservation is still in the system even though my card was declined?"
Rita: (barely concealed contempt) "Yes."
Afraid to carry the conversation further for fear of being too bold and asking some sort of question that would trigger a surcharge, I got off the phone with lovely Rita Meter Maid and went back to the cool apathy of AA.com. I pulled up my reservation and noticed this time the status had changed to "On Hold" with the following note. "If no action is taken by November 15, 2005 (that's tomorrow folks) the reservation will be cancelled." Presumably without a sound too, since they didn't deign to tell me it was on hold in the first place. If I hadn't have called I would have known none of this until too late. Luckily I was able to put the new card number in without losing the reservation. The only upside to all this is, when I put the new number in, the site informed me that the fare price had changed while my reservation was on hold. Expecting the worst I was pleasantly surprised to learn the new price was actually $10 less a ticket.
I know, I know. I should've cancelled the reservation, but every other fare I've seen for that time period (12/30 to 1/3) was at least $100 higher. They've got me by the short and curlies and they know it. That's fine, I'll endure their abuse at the counter when I check in and the baleful looks of the stewards when I ask for that extra bag of pretzel sticks. It'll all be easier because I'll have my girl by my side and she don't take shizzle from NO-BODY baby. She'll give them the stink eye back and it will be a tense few hours in the air. But let me leave you with this . . .
The next time you see American's CEO on CNN whimpering about rising fuel costs or costs related to 9/11 forcing his company into bankruptcy, know he did all he could to save it, including lowering the cost of customer service by simply eliminating it.
Afraid to carry the conversation further for fear of being too bold and asking some sort of question that would trigger a surcharge, I got off the phone with lovely Rita Meter Maid and went back to the cool apathy of AA.com. I pulled up my reservation and noticed this time the status had changed to "On Hold" with the following note. "If no action is taken by November 15, 2005 (that's tomorrow folks) the reservation will be cancelled." Presumably without a sound too, since they didn't deign to tell me it was on hold in the first place. If I hadn't have called I would have known none of this until too late. Luckily I was able to put the new card number in without losing the reservation. The only upside to all this is, when I put the new number in, the site informed me that the fare price had changed while my reservation was on hold. Expecting the worst I was pleasantly surprised to learn the new price was actually $10 less a ticket.
I know, I know. I should've cancelled the reservation, but every other fare I've seen for that time period (12/30 to 1/3) was at least $100 higher. They've got me by the short and curlies and they know it. That's fine, I'll endure their abuse at the counter when I check in and the baleful looks of the stewards when I ask for that extra bag of pretzel sticks. It'll all be easier because I'll have my girl by my side and she don't take shizzle from NO-BODY baby. She'll give them the stink eye back and it will be a tense few hours in the air. But let me leave you with this . . .
The next time you see American's CEO on CNN whimpering about rising fuel costs or costs related to 9/11 forcing his company into bankruptcy, know he did all he could to save it, including lowering the cost of customer service by simply eliminating it.
STUKAZ!
4 comments:
Rita should go to work for USAA General.
LD -- sorry to admit this...I, um, actually, um, have, um, an American Airlines AAdvantage number.
Are we still on for february 18?
Well poop. Lucky for you you're cute.
LD, you're definitely marrying up.
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