US Airways agent #1 skeptically: This guy wants to check his bag onto a different ticket on American. US Airways agent #2: We cant do that. Me: Yes you can. Its called interlining baggage. US Airways agent #2 angrily: You cant tell us what our rules are! US Airways agent #1 hoots hysterically and then regains composure and says somewhat nervously: That was funny though. Me: You can call your support desk if youre not sure how to do it. Theyll tell you. Agent #2 calls (or pretends to call) help desk: Could you look at a reservation for me? ABC123, Mr. Mast. Hes connecting to American. Are we allowed to merge the records? At this point I was cringing and bracing myself for further educational efforts directed toward this utterly clueless agent because my request to interline bags had nothing to do with merging records (which is impossible). But she said, Ok, ok. to the phone and tagged my bags all the way to Wichita. (The reason I was suspicious she was pretending to call them is I cant imagine her having learned anything from that irrelevant conversation and I cant imagine the help desk having such a short conversation because they would have either told her its impossible, which would have given her false ammo to deny me, or since theyre smart guys and would have known they need to probe deeper to figure out whats actually going on.) I thanked her profusely for working so hard to figure it out and wished her a nice day. Its bad enough that I need to train US Airways agents instead of US doing that, but what really makes me angry is all the unknowledgable people she probably sarcastically bullied before me who may not have had the knowledge or confidence or cachet (as top tier elite who they know travels at least 100k miles per year) to push back. Its this kind of thing that makes me nervous about the US-AA merger. United, AA, and Delta agents are consistently friendly, helpful, and knowledgable, though I encounter a bad apple every once in a while. US Airways agents have a 67% bad apple rate across my three substantial interactions with them. Others confirm this tendency.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:41:54 +0000
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