Monday, October 13, 2008
Finally, Headway with SIA!
I hadn't received any form of estimation as to when I would get a resolution from SIA, and I'm flying off on Saturday, so I decided to call SIA up again today.
I called up the Customer Affair's Department at 1500hrs or thereabouts and left a message on their mailbox. Remember, they don't answer phonecalls!
I explained who I was and that I had not seen an email reply till this morning. I would appreciate an update by phone even if they had sent me an email during office hours as I would not be able to read the email.
I did not receive any phone calls but when I got home, I found that they had sent me an email at 1714hrs. *Hmmm I wonder if I hadn't called them up, would I get a response?*
Please, kindly read what I sent to them and tell me what I can do to improve my writing in future to make myself more easily understood.
0 Adorations
I hadn't received any form of estimation as to when I would get a resolution from SIA, and I'm flying off on Saturday, so I decided to call SIA up again today.
I called up the Customer Affair's Department at 1500hrs or thereabouts and left a message on their mailbox. Remember, they don't answer phonecalls!
I explained who I was and that I had not seen an email reply till this morning. I would appreciate an update by phone even if they had sent me an email during office hours as I would not be able to read the email.
I did not receive any phone calls but when I got home, I found that they had sent me an email at 1714hrs. *Hmmm I wonder if I hadn't called them up, would I get a response?*
Dear Ms Silverelf,
Thank you for your patience while my colleagues at KrisFlyer Membership
Services were looking into this matter.
I am glad to inform you that they have since credited 1,410 KrisFlyer miles
into your account.
Ms Silverelf, our sincere apologies once again for the initial inconvenience
caused.
We look forward to welcoming you onboard our flights soon.
Yours sincerely,
Person who got stuck doing this job
Manager Customer ServicesI was quite surprised to get a reply, and when I read the reply I was even more surprised. I would never have figured that SIA would manage to resolve my whole list of issues with a few lines and 1410 Krisflyer miles. I wonder if they understood my original letter?
Please, kindly read what I sent to them and tell me what I can do to improve my writing in future to make myself more easily understood.
I am writing in because I feel that Singapore Airlines has a very good reputation and that as a Singaporean, I am obliged to assist SIA in maintaining standards or even bettering them in the ever more competitive standards of customer service and service recovery.
I will be flying to Japan with my friend on a long awaited trip. As we have been looking forward to this trip, we decided that we would try to make it as enjoyable as possible within our means. When it got to the decision on which airline to fly with and we were choosing between Cathay Pacific Airlines or Singapore Airlines, both of us agreed that we would greatly love to fly with Singapore Airlines, it being a home grown airline of internation repute and all. We were eager to experience the SIA flight.
I happen to hold an AMEX Krisflyer card and an ongoing promotion stated that if I were to book an airfare online, I would be entitled to double the points for the cost of the airfare. Unfortunately, I was unable to book the desired airfare online.
The airfare that I had requested for was an open jaw itinerary, with us flying into Kansai International Airport on the 18th of October and leaving from Narita on the 3rd of November. I had tried for the better part of a month and I could not get hold of such an itinerary on economy class. There was only one time that I could view said itinerary and that was just before my friend confirmed with me that we should fly SIA, as such I did not grab that opprtunity to book the airfare then and there.
Subsequently, I could never obtain the itinerary for economy class, but it would be ok if I had change the cabin class to economy.
Now, of course the first question that comes to mind would be, why would I be able to book on business class and NOT on economy class? Perhaps the seats were sold out? I then called the reservations line and they confirmed with me that seats were available on the flights that I had wanted, and in economy.
So the next question that came to my mind was, why was I consistently not able to view the economy seat offerings but only business class and above? Was it a website problem? If it is a website problem then should not a world class airline such as Singapore Airlines take it unto themselves to ensure a smooth internet experience for all classes of passengers in all sectors of travel?
I was also told that the problem only existed with respect to open jaw economy bookings with Japan. Although I find it hard to understand, I was willing to accept the explanation. After all, economy passengers do pay less to fly then do business, first or suite class and cannot expect too much for their convenience.
I was then offered a waiver of the booking fee if I booked through the phone and I explained to the service representative that I had hoped to book online since I would be entitled to get double points for the purchase. To this she replied that I could call up Krisflyer the next working day and get then to manually adjust the mileage.
With such an offer, I immediately agreed to book the airfare on the 26th of August 2008.
Unfortunately, I was too hasty in my decision. When I called Krisflyer, I was told that Krisflyer does not handle crediting of mileage and that I should speak directly to AMEX. I found this odd but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Afterall all an SIA staff told me to call Krisflyer and now another SIA staff told me to call AMEX.
I called up AMEX and after some checking on the AMEX side, they confirmed that such issues should be handled on the Krisflyer side.
Now, who am I to believe in such a situation? Should AMEX be responsible or should SIA? Out of three people that I have spoken to, 2 of them have said SIA.
Nevertheless, I dutifully called up Krisflyer again and this time, my call was answered by someone who was probably new at her work. In general, the whole twenty minutes that I was online, I was put on hold for at least 10 of those minutes and there were countless repeats of "I cannot help you". There was no attempt to explain why I had been misled to purchasing a product that I might otherwise not have purchased. When I asked the Krisflyer service rep what will happen to my case since she says "I cannot help you further at this time" She replied that if there was anything they could do, they would call me back.
Full stop.
This means, that there will be nothing that anyone can do and noone will call me back. I will just be another statistic on the call center logs. It has been well over a week since my last call to Krisflyer and so far, there has been no followup. No explanation of why such an unfortunate incident has come to pass. Indeed it is starting to feel like since I have paid the money, then it is too bad for me.
I may not be a big spender but I do not spend a thousand dollars for such treatment. Unfortunately, to small fries like me, a thousand dollars is a whole lot of money. The $300 we would have saved would have bought us 6 nights accomodation in Tokyo or probably quite a few good meals.
We felt that we would spend more to enjoy a great experience. Well, I can say that it's definitely an experience now.
I hope that SIA will not just toss this into the digital rubbish bin, but instead take a look and improve things. Lest someone catches the slack and run away with it.
I am sure that you do know, but for the record, at the time of my purchasing an SIA airfare to Japan, Cathay Pacific (which was the other airline that we had been considering) was offering a similar airfare at $300 less. Granted that we needed to do a transit in Hong Kong, but that also meant that for $300 lesser, we could go to Japan and Hong Kong as the fare granted as a stopover.
I had made a decision based on erroneous information being given to me and there is no explanation of any form. I find that it is also very misleading to publicise the 'fact' that customers could get double points for online purchases and then make them leap through hoops to get nowhere.
I would suggest that SIA put a notice on its website stating which online transactions cannot be carried out. SIA should advise AMEX Krisflyer users that the promotion is NOT all encompassing as we may have been led to believe. SIA should decide whether such disputes in future should be handled by Krisflyer or AMEX and communicate such intentions to their staff and to AMEX.
Good service and Service recovery does not mean giving your customers the stars, but it certainly means not making them feel like they were fleeced.
Oh and for the record, when I was submitting this feedback through the website, it kept showing me this :
Our website is experiencing difficulties at the moment and we are unable to process your request. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Please try again later. If the problem persists, please contact your local Singapore Airlines Office for assistance.
Thank you for your patience.
Would be nice to get it fixed. I had to call up the reservation line and wait on hold for 32 mins to get the email address to send this.
Probably was too long for them to get through Iguess? I certainly did not mean to make it sound like the only problem was the crediting of mileage. Certainly if the website problem never happened, we would never have had to discuss manual crediting of mileage in the first place!
It is rather amazing how they 'resolved' everything in that email with that one reply about 1410 miles.
I'm going to write them another email, one that is shorter and hopefully easier to understand. I hope I succeed this time!
I will be flying to Japan with my friend on a long awaited trip. As we have been looking forward to this trip, we decided that we would try to make it as enjoyable as possible within our means. When it got to the decision on which airline to fly with and we were choosing between Cathay Pacific Airlines or Singapore Airlines, both of us agreed that we would greatly love to fly with Singapore Airlines, it being a home grown airline of internation repute and all. We were eager to experience the SIA flight.
I happen to hold an AMEX Krisflyer card and an ongoing promotion stated that if I were to book an airfare online, I would be entitled to double the points for the cost of the airfare. Unfortunately, I was unable to book the desired airfare online.
The airfare that I had requested for was an open jaw itinerary, with us flying into Kansai International Airport on the 18th of October and leaving from Narita on the 3rd of November. I had tried for the better part of a month and I could not get hold of such an itinerary on economy class. There was only one time that I could view said itinerary and that was just before my friend confirmed with me that we should fly SIA, as such I did not grab that opprtunity to book the airfare then and there.
Subsequently, I could never obtain the itinerary for economy class, but it would be ok if I had change the cabin class to economy.
Now, of course the first question that comes to mind would be, why would I be able to book on business class and NOT on economy class? Perhaps the seats were sold out? I then called the reservations line and they confirmed with me that seats were available on the flights that I had wanted, and in economy.
So the next question that came to my mind was, why was I consistently not able to view the economy seat offerings but only business class and above? Was it a website problem? If it is a website problem then should not a world class airline such as Singapore Airlines take it unto themselves to ensure a smooth internet experience for all classes of passengers in all sectors of travel?
I was also told that the problem only existed with respect to open jaw economy bookings with Japan. Although I find it hard to understand, I was willing to accept the explanation. After all, economy passengers do pay less to fly then do business, first or suite class and cannot expect too much for their convenience.
I was then offered a waiver of the booking fee if I booked through the phone and I explained to the service representative that I had hoped to book online since I would be entitled to get double points for the purchase. To this she replied that I could call up Krisflyer the next working day and get then to manually adjust the mileage.
With such an offer, I immediately agreed to book the airfare on the 26th of August 2008.
Unfortunately, I was too hasty in my decision. When I called Krisflyer, I was told that Krisflyer does not handle crediting of mileage and that I should speak directly to AMEX. I found this odd but gave them the benefit of the doubt. Afterall all an SIA staff told me to call Krisflyer and now another SIA staff told me to call AMEX.
I called up AMEX and after some checking on the AMEX side, they confirmed that such issues should be handled on the Krisflyer side.
Now, who am I to believe in such a situation? Should AMEX be responsible or should SIA? Out of three people that I have spoken to, 2 of them have said SIA.
Nevertheless, I dutifully called up Krisflyer again and this time, my call was answered by someone who was probably new at her work. In general, the whole twenty minutes that I was online, I was put on hold for at least 10 of those minutes and there were countless repeats of "I cannot help you". There was no attempt to explain why I had been misled to purchasing a product that I might otherwise not have purchased. When I asked the Krisflyer service rep what will happen to my case since she says "I cannot help you further at this time" She replied that if there was anything they could do, they would call me back.
Full stop.
This means, that there will be nothing that anyone can do and noone will call me back. I will just be another statistic on the call center logs. It has been well over a week since my last call to Krisflyer and so far, there has been no followup. No explanation of why such an unfortunate incident has come to pass. Indeed it is starting to feel like since I have paid the money, then it is too bad for me.
I may not be a big spender but I do not spend a thousand dollars for such treatment. Unfortunately, to small fries like me, a thousand dollars is a whole lot of money. The $300 we would have saved would have bought us 6 nights accomodation in Tokyo or probably quite a few good meals.
We felt that we would spend more to enjoy a great experience. Well, I can say that it's definitely an experience now.
I hope that SIA will not just toss this into the digital rubbish bin, but instead take a look and improve things. Lest someone catches the slack and run away with it.
I am sure that you do know, but for the record, at the time of my purchasing an SIA airfare to Japan, Cathay Pacific (which was the other airline that we had been considering) was offering a similar airfare at $300 less. Granted that we needed to do a transit in Hong Kong, but that also meant that for $300 lesser, we could go to Japan and Hong Kong as the fare granted as a stopover.
I had made a decision based on erroneous information being given to me and there is no explanation of any form. I find that it is also very misleading to publicise the 'fact' that customers could get double points for online purchases and then make them leap through hoops to get nowhere.
I would suggest that SIA put a notice on its website stating which online transactions cannot be carried out. SIA should advise AMEX Krisflyer users that the promotion is NOT all encompassing as we may have been led to believe. SIA should decide whether such disputes in future should be handled by Krisflyer or AMEX and communicate such intentions to their staff and to AMEX.
Good service and Service recovery does not mean giving your customers the stars, but it certainly means not making them feel like they were fleeced.
Oh and for the record, when I was submitting this feedback through the website, it kept showing me this :
Our website is experiencing difficulties at the moment and we are unable to process your request. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Please try again later. If the problem persists, please contact your local Singapore Airlines Office for assistance.
Thank you for your patience.
Would be nice to get it fixed. I had to call up the reservation line and wait on hold for 32 mins to get the email address to send this.
Probably was too long for them to get through Iguess? I certainly did not mean to make it sound like the only problem was the crediting of mileage. Certainly if the website problem never happened, we would never have had to discuss manual crediting of mileage in the first place!
It is rather amazing how they 'resolved' everything in that email with that one reply about 1410 miles.
I'm going to write them another email, one that is shorter and hopefully easier to understand. I hope I succeed this time!
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