Air France Customer Service: Not Good

It is very simple, I stopped liking Air France in 2002 and the sentiment has not changed yet. And this is mainly because their customer service sucks, big time (will explain more below). On the other hand, I have had positive experiences with United, American Airlines, Continental - among US Airlines and extremely positive experiences with All Nippon Airways (japan) and Singapore Airlines.

I have had neutral experiences with Delta, US Airways, Northwest and Frontier Airlines. Never had a chance to use Jetblue, Southwest, Midwest or other carriers yet.

This rant is all about why I still don't trust Air France and due to that underlying reason, most of the Skyteam group in general.

Some of you might have gotten here searching for "how to redeem ff miles on Skyteam", or "Delta-Northwest merger" or "Air France sucks" etc. In the past several months, I have not been bashing any organization outright, except perhaps AIG or the super spendthrift policies of the US Govt. However, Air France, after giving me some bad experiences and challenging customer service situations in 2002, is now gloriously back in the picture.

In 2008, I had tried using up my soon to expire 30,000 Flying Blue Miles to book a free ticket, only to be presented with extremely restrictive choices on departure airports as well as available dates. In fact, I had to go over to continental.com to get a preview of available award tickets, because the Flying blue website nor the agents were not very helpful in that regard. Anyhow I had somehow managed to book a ticket in May 2009 to fly to San Juan Puerto Rico [which the agents mistake as San Jose every one of the 3 times I/ or they had called about it). I wonder what their accuracy of booking is when it comes to sending people correctly to Puerto rico instead of the Silicon valley. I ramble.]

Flying Blue changed the tickets themselves because it seems CO changed flight numbers. Flying Blue had charged a humongous 78.30 on taxes and surcharges and would not explain the break up until I have had conducted multiple "interrogation" sessions on the phone [Fuel charge: ~32.30 Taxes: 35, Unexplained: $ 10].

Finally when I called to change the dates, there were conflicting details on the change fee: the website shows 45 euros. But the Ontario office mentions a USD 70 fee. Finally when I decided enough is enough and with the H1N1 flu advisory, decided to cancel my no essential travel, Flying Blue would not refund my $8.30 directly. They wanted to charge $70 first to some credit card and then after 4-5 business days (euphemism for you will be left hanging) their ticketing would refund my 78.30 it seems. The agent also kept referring to the entire amount as taxes, when it clearly is not. The fuel surcharge is clearly not a tax. Why try to shift the blame on the goverment, when it is Air France that is pocketing the fuel surcharge? Anyhow the agent was not willing to do simple math and issue me a $8.30 refund, insisting that they need a CC for placing a $70 debit.

So as of now I have just let things lie as they are, and sent an email to Flying Blue Customer Care in Florida on Monday:

Hello __________
I had called to cancel an award ticket issued by Flying Blue (locator: BLANKED OUT) for a flight on May XX leaving EWR going to San Juan PR and returning on May XX on Continental Airlines. The taxes & surcharges added up to USD 78.30 when I purchased the ticket. Now I want to cancel the ticket due to (insert any reason here).

When I called the representative in the North American office (located in Ontario Canada), the cancellation fee was explained to me as USD 70. I agree with that amount although it was not explicitly stated in my initial ticket agreement (emailed to me as a pdf).

Even considering that I am owed $8.30 by Flying Blue. However, the agent I spoke to insisted on requesting a new credit card to apply a $70 fee and then have a refund of $78.30 applied to my old card. I am calling to simply request a refund of $8.30 charged back to my original card.

This is a very simple request and does not require any new debits of $70. I fail to see why a new fee needs to be added just because of the lack of interconnection in Air France's reservation & ticketing departments. Please cancel my award ticket, and reissue a refund of $8.30 to my CC account and I will consider this matter closed.
Thank you,
____________________ (customer)

As of Wednesday I have not even received an acknowledgement, let alone a resolution of the issue. I am thinking that AF will probably make away with the taxes without giving any to the government and yet at the same time not even bother to return me my rightful $8.30.


The update: Flying Blue Customer Service replied, but basically neither are they being frank about saying that their transaction system sucks, nor are they willing to modify their system to pay the difference. It is a copy paste from their std policy. Now you tell me, why would n't most customers get annoyed with policies like these?

Thank you for contacting Flying Blue.

We have received your enquiry concerning changes to an Award ticket.

Changes to your ticket may be made to the dates and the route within the validity period of the Award and in the same Award Zone. Any change requests must be received by Flying Blue before the flight has been taken. The modification fee is 70.00CAD/USD per reissue. (They are not able to make up if it CAD or USD, why not the 45 Euros as listed on AF website??) Once a portion of the ticket has been flown, you may only change the date of travel. No routing changes are permitted on partial used tickets.

The cancellation fee and reimbursement of taxes are two separate transactions therefore we are not able to waive the collection of the fee to reimburse the difference.

Please contact Flying Blue center at 1 800 375 8723 to finalize the cancelation process of your reservation BLANKED OUT.

Please consult the web sites www.airfrance.com or www.klm.com for complete information and conditions regarding our programme and your account.

Please feel free to contact us again in the future should you need further assistance.

Sincerely,
_____________
Flying Blue Team

Earn Miles Free

I just remembered some methods to earn airline miles without spending a penny (yes no money involved), except of course, your time on the internet!

www.e-miles.com

www.erewards.com (the sponsor list is here: Air France, Continental, Delta and US Airways are sponsors through whom you can get an invitation + Hilton honors, bmi - no link given here)

US Airways has all sorts of additional ways to earn miles, one which caught my was the Microsoft Live Search Club (under Get Miles > Even more ways to earn.)

If the links above do not work directly, I would suggest that you go to the 'Earn Miles" or Get Miles section of each mileage program webpage and search around a bit, usually erewards can be found under "other ways" or "Even other ways/Other partners".

Emiles typically makes you take surveys (5-10 miles/event) and then an option to buy products (100-500 miles earned depending on purchase size) from many different online retailers including names like Target, Flowers.com, Cruise lines etc.

ERewards is more of an online market survey group. You receive survey invitations by email and then respond to those within 1-2 days of email receipt. Even if you are invited by one partner, E-rewards also gives the flexibility to obtain any type of available reward, like amazon certs, any airline miles or gift certs for the rewards you earn.

For some airlines, www.Opinionplace.com works (AAdvantage)

Other airlines have their own promotions or dining miles program (eg UAL Dining)- register any credit card and when you naturally happen to eat out at selected restaurants (cheap to pricey) you end up earning miles quietly when you pay with the registered card.

The Torture of (Skyteam) Airlines Miles and Redeeming for Awards

I can tell this to you in one line:
If you want to fly for free on Delta or Northwest or Continental airlines or any other Skyteam alliance airlines, it is very very hard to do so.

This post specifically targets Skyteam after my 6-8 day marathon in an attempt to book free tickets using my 31000 flying blue miles. The miles were up for expiry at the end of August, so I was calling around Air France at the end of July to try to book a ticket to the Caribbean or to Latin America (which cost 30000 miles and is a good deal). Of course since Air France is based in France, they do not offer an online booking option for booking on other airlines. This is standard industry practice so I don't blame them.

But the difficult part was trying to find booking on Continental or Delta or Northwest. I searched for several dates in March and in May, and the cheap 30000 miles economy class was not available on either the outward or inward legs for several day pairs that I tried. A word here about looking for award seat availability. Delta's website was by far the easiest which showed availabilty for 14 days before and after your requested date. So at a simple glance at the month you could easily figure out what dates were good. But often, the answer was none. Northwest's website was the worst to deal with. Continental was in between, in terms of searching for award seat availability.
I could not find any availability to (gasp) Puerto Rico (SJU), US Virgin Islands (STT), Santo Domingo (SDU), Caracas (CCS), San Jose Costa Rica (SJO), Honduras (TGP?). The only place with some easier availability was Panama City (PTY) but I was not too keen on Panama, especially compared to Costa Rica. So why do I have an issue with Skyteam: well while I was looking for flights on skyteam airlines, I was also checking on American Airlines, on which there was tons and tons of off peak availability in March and May - the times I was looking for a Spring break or early summer travel. The other reason apart from mile expiry for me was that Delta/Northwest fly out of my little town, but not American.
However, that incentive was removed once I called Air France - they ruled out award tickets from my obscure town's airport and also mentioned that come Jan 09 there wont be any skyteam flights out of here anyway. I spent 3-4 phone sessions lasting 20+ minutes each (burning valuable daytime minutes) looking for tix to Latin america, Hawaii (very hard even normally), or Alaska or even New Mexico or Arizona from the east coast.
At this point I was envisioning conspiracy theories that airline computers are programmed to reduce availability on returns within a week or two of outgoing flights to PR/latin america etc so I started searching in a different browser for awards from Latin America to US to check my theory. Fortunately in that search there was no availability from Latin America to US on my "originally planned return dates". So I felt a ray of hope that there was no evil programming against me. Also, in the past I have tried booking tickets on Jet Airways or Kingfisher airlines only to be quoted outrageous fuel surcharges of $105 per trip so I decided against doing those trips. I should add though that I have flown award tix on United twice without any hassle or major difficulty in finding seats.

So now after 3 phone sessions which did not lead anywhere, I did an aggressive search on Continental.com and finally found availabily in a nice 1 week window in May from JFK to Puerto Rico. That's it, I dropped everything and called Air France, reeled off the exact dates and times to the AF rep and bingo, the agent was happy to find me seats. Of course, little did she know that I knew exactly what was open. Then I had to pay up fuel surcharges and taxes to reserve my ticket so I ended up spending $78 immediately for a ticket next May to a Caribbean island. At least, I would not need to carry a passport on that trip, whew!