A reader experienced a glitch booking an award with American Airlines AAdvantage. American surprised me by making it right, and all it took was the basic practice of hang up, call back when you don’t get the answer you want the first time.
Don’t ever argue with an agent. It’s not your job to educate them. Just start over fresh with someone else. Here, 15 years ago, I was reminding you of the dangers of not hanging up and calling back (pressing forward with an unhelpful agent gets your reservation documented, telling future agents not to help you). And here’s hang up and try again from way back in 2009.
- They’re a 10-year AAdvantage elite, and put an award on hold. It was for four passengers one-way in business class from Phoenix to Auckland, New Zealand (via Los Angeles) for 84,000 miles per passenger. However the reservation cancelled (held expired) the day before the website said it would.
- At that point, it was pricing at 135,000 miles per person (a 51,000 increase, or 204,000 additional miles total).
- Twitter said nothing could be done as well, but they hung up and called back – and found an agent who provided an aa.com email address to forward their original reservation hold to. Once they’d documented the commitment, they went on hold for 3 minutes to get the booking set up and issued the tickets at the original 84,000 miles per passenger.
I admit, I was surprised how easy it was to find an agent to do this. I expected they’d be in for a fight. The Department of Transportation prohibits post-purchase price increases, but these tickets hadn’t been purchased. The airline committed to hold the reservation, but I expected them to say pricing is never guaranteed until tickets are issued. That would be a deceptive practice, but one hard to get satisfaction over.
And the reader’s takeaway is how important the lesson is to hang up and call back. I’ve long said this is the best single tactic for getting helpful resolution from airlines (and other large bureaucracies). When you get a bad answer, or an answer that isn’t what you want, start over with a new agent.
- Agent competence, effort, knowledge, and willingness to help has wide variance.
- Systems are complex and sometimes broken. Agents mis-search, take shortcuts, or assume “no” because the tools or training pushes them there.
- Incentives aren’t aligned with solving hard problems. If they’re measured on throughput, spending time to really fix something isn’t in their interest. You want someone knowledgeable and motivated to help.
- Whether you’re entitled to what you’re asking for or not, this is the best approach. On the one hand, you want to find an agent who can deliver what you’re supposed to get. On the other hand, you want to find an agent who’s sympathetic enough to bend rules or who will do what you ask as the path of least resistance.
You’re not guaranteed what you want by hanging up and calling back, but odds rise. Do your own homework first when possible so you know the difference between a true or correct no and a bad agent. And if you’re not sure, I suggest a ‘rule of three’ – hearing no three times before believing it’s real.
Regardless, don’t argue and don’t try to “educate” the agent who isn’t giving you what you want. Trying to win a debate isn’t helpful to your cause. It’s easier and faster to start over with someone competent.
Build rapport with the agent. Be pleasant, empathic, and give the agent a reason to “be on your side” especially during major weather events when everyone is complaining to them. You don’t want to be just one more person for them to ‘get through’.
If you try to educate them, and keep the conversation going, you risk having the agent document your booking “customer advised that….” and that’s going to frame your request for the next agent, plus make it less likely for htem to go out on a limb. Future agents rarely contradict documented “prior advice.”
This does take time, especially when hold times are long. That can tempt you to litigate with a weak agent because you don’t want to start over holding against. That’s when discipline matters most.
I’d add that this strategy works well with most large bureaucracies whether cable or bank. Complex rules, uneven training, and bad incentives lead to inconsistent answers. Hang up and call back.
This is outstanding advice — I’ve been doing the exact same thing for three decades now. It’s also helpful to terminate the call and call back if you realize within the first 30 seconds that the agent is in a bad mood, retarded, or has a foreign accent so thick that comprehension is difficult.
I had a similar issue with a held revenue fare (at ticketing the system wanted to reprice to a much higher fare).
Agent repriced it on the first call at the correct price.
A decade or two ago, I remember holds would often either expire or prices increase at the 24 hour mark, but before the 11:59 pm promised on the website. Back then, the regular agents wouldn’t help, but there was a separate phone number circulating for web tech support, and they could get it reinstated.
Great advice.
I always find it interesting that the customer is most often asked for more instead of being given a discount. A couple weeks ago I stopped by my local hardware store to get some fasteners. I saw a package that was priced in my budget so I took it off of the hanger and also photographed the price tag. Then I went elsewhere to look for a different size. Before I went to the checkout counter I stopped back and the price tag was now significantly higher. At checkout I complained when I was being charged the higher price but the clerk changed it back for my purchase after seeing the photographic evidence.