"riverman" wrote...
Just had an eye-opening experience, and learned a suprising inside hint.

I'm booking my tickets to fly to the US this summer, and I call the
Northwest Airlines Frequent Flier desk, and get a Friendly Agent. After
about 20 minutes, we have set up a pretty good itinerary, although one of
the flights is on a 'compromise' day, she tells me the whole thing will cost
me about $250 in fees, etc, and suddenly the phone goes dead. Not uncommon
from here, so with a few 'damns', I call the number back, and get a
different Friendly Agent. She says its impossible to get my original agent
back, but she can help me rebuild my itinerary.

She instantly checks the arrangements the previous agent had assembled, and
finds a better flight for the compromised leg. She also finds some
technical glitch for another leg that needs to be fixed before she can book
it (something about a codeshare restriction). I find this strange, since the
previous Friendly Agent did not have any problem booking that leg.

Then, just as she starts to look into this technical glitch, she announces
that her shift is ending and I get passed on to Friendly Agent #3. However,
FA#3 did not inherit ANY of my itinerary that FA#2 had built, so we have to
reconstruct it from scratch, once again.

FA#3 finds the same flights as FA#2, including the better leg, and says that
the 'technical glitch' is not a problem on the leg FA#2 said it was, but
that a different leg had the problem. Just as she is addressing this, the
phone goes dead again.

"Damn", then I call back a fourth time, and get FA#4. She checks my last
itinerary, and not only are there no technical glitches on any of the legs,
she finds me a replacement flight, creating an excellent itinerary with no
compromises. And the price is only $100 in taxes and fees.

So go figure. It appears that each FA has a lot of freedom to 'adjust'
things, probably based on their skills (since each interaction was pleasant,
so there was no jerk-around going on). If you are making FF reservations and
they just don't seem to fit, I'd suggest calling back right away and trying
several times. It really worked out for me!

Yeah, but if the order when you called had been FA#4, 3, 2, 1, you'd be screwed!
--
TL,
Tim
------------------------
http://css.sbcma.com/timj