Airlines have many ways for a person to contact them these days. You can use their website, some have chat bots, there’s Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, online forms and the old school telephone. As a result, it amazes me when people say they couldn’t get through to their airline.
From the sounds of it, airlines often deliberately turn everything off and stop customer contact. Not only is that incorrect, it would be incredibly bad for business.
“Couldn’t Get Through”
Today I happened to be reading an online forum where someone was throwing shade at their airline due to a cancellation. While that is understandable, my hackles rose as soon as I saw the text, “Can’t get through to the Gold line”.
Never in my entire life have I not been able to get through to an airline. It’s not like there has ever been an engaged signal when making a call, so you might wonder what happened here.
I get it, time is precious, but quite frankly if your need to speak to the airline is urgent, stay on hold. Whenever I am holding, I put my phone on speaker and go about my daily business. They always answer, then I can pick it up and get on with the call.
Overall Thoughts
There is no sympathy coming from me when people can’t be bothered to help themselves. Airline contact centres can get busy, especially during periods of disruption. If your flight was cancelled, you can bet others were too and therefore wait times on hold are going to be longer.
You’re doing yourself no favours by hanging up after waiting for a long period of time, as you could well be right at the front of the queue. That’s always what keeps me hanging on anyway! (Set me free, why don’t you babe?)
Have you had experiences where you actually couldn’t get through to an airline? (I have by the way, as some of them are not 24/7!) Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Call centre image by Arlington Research on Unsplash.
Try contacting Aer Lingus! Seriously. All I want to do is get seat assignments for my (UA ticketed) business class flights. Cannot accomplish this simple task on their website. Even if you select the prompt “I want to purchase a ticket” you are left on hold with a repeating message ad nauseam, with no indication if hold time is 5 minutes or 5 hours. So I tried their WhatsApp option. Worse! I type in my name, record locator and request. Then 24+ hours later I get a reply like “we need your email address.” Then 24 hours later “we need your ticket number.” Like that for days. Then I get “Thanks for chatting, how can we help you?” They didn’t read all the info provided above. To take several days of frustration to accomplish a ridiculously simple task gives me doubts about the airline. So poorly mismanaged. I just hope my flights take off and land in one piece. And by the way, I still don’t have my seat assignments.
Yes, you have to telephone Aer Lingus to make seat assignments on flights booked via other airlines, as you’ve noticed. I tend to call the Dublin number and it generally doesn’t have much of a wait time. They then do the seating quite quickly. I guess that doesn’t help you, presumably in the US. I’ve never tried the Whatsapp option, though them asking for the ticket number is pretty standard – when I book via BA and then need to select a seat, they usually need the ticket number to find the ticket in the system, as the record locater from BA is different to the one Aer Lingus use (I assume it’s the same situation for UA). You’ll have a good flight though, Aer Lingus are really nice in business class, what with the free Wi-Fi and all the rest of it. Hopefully you get the seat you want too!
Airlines don’t want to talk to their Customers; full stop. You are clearly not as much travelled as you claim to be!
You are right, airlines prefer people to use the online tools provided, which work for many queries. Ideally everyone would do everything online, however the technology is not quite there yet due to the complexity of airline ticketing, meaning people still have to telephone in for certain queries.
It’s happened to me with Air France/KLM multiple occasions. I’m on hold for around 45 minutes and then finally the recording says something to the effect of “please try later” and disconnects. Other times it disconnected after being on for a while and then disconnects without a message.
Totally believable.
That’s very poor and how irritating that must be after having waited for so long on hold. It really shouldn’t do that, it’s hardly “customer service” is it?
I’m a platinum member with united and called them four times last week during the major disruptions. Once I connected after 1 hour. The other times I gave up after 2-4 hours. Being on hold for 4+ hours is functionally equivalent to not being able to get through. To make matters worse, UA had flights available for *purchase* but those flights could not be selected to “rebook” when my flights were delayed/cancelled. Essentially they would sell me the tickets but not let me rebook for free. Flight status and availability changed so frequently that waiting 4 hours was, as a practical matter, pointless (though I did anyway, to no avail)
I also used their “text an agent” and “live video chat” functions, which literally never connected, and Twitter (no response to date).
Fair point, I don’t think I’ve waited much more than an hour before, so I would forgive anyone for giving up after two, three or four hours. Having the flights available to book but not to rebook only adds insult to injury. Sounds like a pretty bad experience all round there!
Some of these people might be referring to that the telephone lines are busy and hold times are really long.
I wonder how one can call from overseas using some sort of app, like WhatsApp? I have a work app that allows calls up to 20 minutes to anywhere in the US, as long as I have an internet connection. AFter 20 minutes, the call is disconnected!
I imagine people can still use Skype to make overseas calls. I get about 90 minutes of free international calls per month on my mobile plan so I just use that.
I disagree with your premise. This is not solely about passengers not “bothering.” I have had a handful of times when an airline’s phone system – both US and non-US carriers — would randomly disconnect me after being on hold for multiple hours. Although it could be inadequate technology, I think it was also agents trying to improve/game their numbers. In all cases it was unreasonable. Call times of 2,4, 8+ hours are outrageous in any circumstances, particularly if no other channel, such as text, twitter, etc. are offered.
Having worked in call centres, it’s pretty much a dismissal if you hang up on a customer who is waiting on hold… so I’d suggest it might be the technology more than anything else. I agree with you on the wait times. I think anything over 45 minutes is ridiculous, even though I have held on for longer on more than one occasion. I’m generally very happy if a call is answered in 10 minutes or less and pleased enough if it’s under 20 – and most are under 20 for me anyway.
With BA the system disconnects you after being 1h on hold > so you can’t get through
Well that should be amended – it sounds like a setting and a choice rather than a limitation of the software.
I have certainly had this with BA – options that spin you round in circles without ever letting you talk to anyone. And SM system that comes back with more questions 24 hours later…
Other airlines are easy by comparison…
Oh I have on occasion been victim of call transfer roulette and been through three, four, five different people, none of whom can help. Luckily it’s only been once or twice, but it’s not fun when it happens. Frustrating doesn’t begin to describe it!