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.
Great point!
(Anecdotally I’d just point out that this case was on the customer’s side since it was an AA award on AA metal. Doubt they would have been able to push thru partner award space that was booked)
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.
“Dynamic” pricing on a retail shelf is heinous.
@Paul:
It may be heinous, but it is now all the rage in retail. Count on it.
Incidentally that’s an amazing award. Especially for four passengers!
I had an American award once for my wife and two kids. Ord to Vancouver on AA, then Vancouver to Sydney on Qantas in biz. American cancelled the Ord to YVR route and changed them to via Dallas with some horrible stopovers.
I rung American and got an older agent and asked what I could do. The agent said “why not just fly ORD to LAX then American metal to Sydney?” Umm because there is zero availability for the whole month? Well, she could do it! Changed three of them into American business.
Was amazing. No idea how she had the power to make the change.
@Mike Hunt — “retarded, or has a foreign accent” … Did you ever consider, to others, that’s you, sir?
“Hello. I’m Mike calling about ABCXYZ reservation. You said your name was Yolanda? I hope your day is pretty decent today. Ya know, I worked in a call center early in my career and I promise you right now in this moment I won’t be one of those people who get angry or upset or yell. I just have a problem and I’m hoping you can be the one to fix it for me because let me tell you something — all those other people out there are CRAZY. But not you or me Yolanda — we know what’s up.”
Do you have any idea the absolute MAGIC that paragraph above has been able to accomplish over the past two decades?
@1990 – I’m not surprised that you truncated my comment in the manner in which you did. Comprehension is always difficult for you.
@Mike Hint — Was it “so thick,” or so thicc?
Other @Mike “knows what’s up”… speaking of, been back to Argentina?
@1990: Do I know you? 🙂
I was amused at the to-and-fro about thick accents of ‘foreign’ call centre agents!
As an Australian I frequently had difficulty understanding most female American agents at NYC-based call centres and busineses. Most easily understood were Alaska agentsoperating out of Boise. They are friendly, relaxed and often up for a bit of chit-chat. Furthermore, nothing was too much of a problem1
Oh, Mike Mike Mike…..
If I was Yolanda I would have hung up on you halfway through your speil!
You sound like a door-to-door salesman selling dodgy vacuum cleaaners!
@Mike — @L737 and I are fans of your tales from Buenos Aires. If I recall correctly, she went to DFW; you, to MIA.
No risk aversion skills say that if I get 1 front line customer service idiot, I’m likely to get another. The pro move is to simply do what we have known to do since the 80’s talk to a supervisor.
Good point on getting a second opinion and maybe a better deal out of a phone agent – what a horrible job if you think about it… But it also works with gate agents. Last year I missed a flight out of San Jose, CR and the first Avianca gate agent could hardly be bothered to talk to me. Gave me the wrong number for Avianca support (and talk about foreign accents!).
So, I went back to the gate, found an older guy holding the podium and within 3 minutes he a) showed me where my luggage was being held in security and b) was very reassuring and c) handed me a boarding pass for the next flight out to San Salvador. Was like a miracle. Agents have a lot of leeway in what they can and are WILLING to do. Try it!
@ Mike Hunt
“retarded”?
Really?
Just which century are you living in?
I also think this is the best way forward if you need help. My only caveat would be to be polite and simply say, “gosh, that doesn’t work for me, but I guess I’ll have to live with it.” Then hang-up, wait awhile, and call again. That way it doesn’t get noted on your record that you hung up on them or were abusive or rude. Once or twice they have even said something to the effect of “let me try that one more time” or “let me ask a colleague here about this” that sometimes helps. Usually, however, if you get a “bad” agent, or one just overworked, tired, or simply had a bad day altogether, you just need to finish with them and move on to another try.