Alaska Air, your phone service sucks (but you fixed it)

Jul 15th 2009
Tags: Just my thoughts

Alaska Air, your phone service sucks (but you fixed it)

It was a simple problem. I have a roundtrip ticket from Phoenix to Seattle, leaving July 24 and returning August 1. Since I’m headed to New York in August, I wanted to change my August 1 flight and fly from Seattle to New York (Newark, actually) on August 2.

Seems simple, right?

Not really. Since I purchased this ticket with miles and money (granted, those miles were awarded to me because I’ve been flying roundtrips from Phx to Sea twice a year for six years now) there are restrictions, which are referred to as an illegal open jaw. Yep, that’s what they told me, I couldn’t change the ticket because it was an illegal open jaw. WTF does that even mean?

After the first lady had had enough of me, she passed me on to Christine (sp?) who then quoted policy (saying that I couldn’t change the ticket because of rules) to me. I asked where this policy was, she told me online. Oh, and then couldn’t find it after 10 minutes. We then went on to bicker about fine print, she insinuated if I had paid full price I wouldn’t have had to deal with it such restrictions and that my reward for being a long time customer was this confrontation.

Airlines, I get your discount tickets have restrictions. I get that you can’t change them. What you can do is explain to me that my ticket was based on miles flown, it can’t be modified and that’d be happy to help me book a ticket to NY. Also, offer a free drink coupon.

Or you could piss me off to the point I never fly your airline again because you’re customer service sucks. Your call, Alaska Air.

Edit: Alaska Air, via Twitter, has offered me $50 as an apology. Nice work on the web side.

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