Phoenix Still Lands Badly with Customer Care

Problems in Air China Phoenix Miles Portal 
I have written in to Air China to express unhappiness over Air China Phoenix Miles Service standards. The note below is an edited version of an email sent to Air China service centre and bears testimony to the amount of effort used in trying to resolve ticketing and Phoenix Miles issues with Air China. Other episode have previously occurred but only the most recent encounters are given herein.

The matter concerns the perpetual problem of wrong passenger name record, not correctly capturing Phoenix Miles during check-in process and the inability to update Phoenix Miles post trip and obtain information from the portal. Further to this, there is the problem of not being able to transfer Phoenix Miles to other Star Alliance Member account.

Air China has changed its policy unannounced of retrospective crediting of Phoenix Miles from 6 months to 14 days (Notification dated 17 Feb 2012 on Phoenix Miles) resulting in some legs of journeys being invalidated. To the uninitiated passenger member who is on a 14 days tour, he would find his journey ineligible for Phoenix Miles since the window for manual entry has lapsed. Passenger members who may be aware of this 14 days limit would nonetheless face difficulties with using the portal as he would not be able to proceed to make entries. Under these circumstances, the recourse was then to contact the service centre for assistance and hopefully the matter could be resolved within the 14 days period.

The practice of printing Phoenix Miles membership number on boarding passes is a laudable idea, provided these records do not end up in a void in any of the ticketing and / or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system /database. However, recent events of  recurrent mistakes are indicative of  systematic problem of a crude CRM regardless of the language version of the portal. Mistakes range from failure to rectify passenger name in the presence of documentary evidence despite it being repeatedly sent over for Air China verification purposes.

To the passenger member it creates a great deal of exasperation and impatience. Therefore it is understandable to feel frustrated and the propensity to tar the whole airline with a single brush. Events that have unfolded can only make One emphatise with Air China service centre but sympathise with the passenger member who use Phoenix Miles.

So, to save on further aggravation, passenger member preference was to cease contacting Air China service centre in the likelihood that nothing would come out of it. Any new contact may cause even more aggravation from the need to regurgitate all the events.

With the possibility of avoiding aggravation, it was deemed neccessary to rebuild the flight history manually from memory recollection and supporting material. However it soon became clear that such efforts would be an act of futility after making attempts at Phoenix Miles portal. Thus began another chain of emails to Phoenix Miles Service Centre adding to more distress for passenger members.

The login process claimed that the passenger name differed from the name on the boarding pass and rejected the entry and login. How bizarre… What was puzzling was that Membership number together with the passenger was required during ticket booking or was present in Air China ticketing system. Furthermore, passenger member has sent and received confirmation of remedial actions (see attached emails). Not forgetting Phoenix Miles member number was processed at the the time of obtaining boarding passes.

Sensing that the Air China Phoenix Miles saga would not end; it was eventually decided that the accumulated mileage were to be transferred to another Star Alliance member (Krisflyer) since passenger member has already spent a good deal of time and effort with asking Air China to resolve the issue. However, it soon became clear that even as passenger member want to transfer the Phoenix Mile out of the portal, the portal did not possess the provision necessary for the transfer to occur.

In summary, passenger member should not have to be made to go through such angst, after all Air China is in the industry of providing service. With the way events have unfolded I certainly doubt that Air China can improve in the short term, in short the "Phoenix" still has a long way to go towards changing customers’ perceptions about itself.       

Enc: Past correspondences are as appended (name edited out)