I think Air India's Flying Returns is the worst ever mileage programme that I have come across because one faces lots of hurdles and unpleasantness in simply redeeming miles leave alone upgrades. The entire interaction with their staff handling flying returns at their central contact centres is just not smooth as they just don't know much about their own mileage programme and every representative offers a different perspective about flying returns resulting in total confusion. The customer suffers because of their lack of accurate information and lack of real assistance to resolve any issues or complaints regarding redeeming miles. In fact they are very rigid in their approach and just do not know how to deal professionally with customers.
As for Air India's Flying Returns Service centre at Mumbai, they are just not responsive or interactive. They never really answer calls or reply to your mails even if you constantly send them reminders regarding mileage related queries . They are as good as not being there.
I have an old account with them and in all these years they never ever thought of verifying my details. Suddenly AI wakes up and realises that they need to verify my details just when the miles are about to expire ! Naturally one cannot redeem miles till KYC is updated and verified according to them and one can't help but think that their timing is perfect in terms of making the customer lose their miles because the verification process takes time. I can't help but think that it would have only been fair had they informed me much earlier about the KYC updating, I would not be on the verge of losing my miles. It seems now because of them I may be about to lose an award flight since their back end team is just not in the mood to verify the documents I updated ( proof of address certificate by the Superintendent of Police, passport details, aadhar card etc.). And their lack of co-operation in the matter reveals their lack of interest in promoting their mileage programme. They were not willing to extend the miles so that the customer does not suffer by losing miles due to their delays in verification or even accept another alternative where the customer could provide the KYC documents in person at their office so that the miles could be redeemed right on time before the expiry date,
Emirates has a much better mileage programme compared to Air India or Lufthansa for that matter and have a very courteous and flexible attitude towards their customers. Emirates had once extended my mother's miles for a year as they were having technical problems but Lufthansa never did anything like that and Air India too would not ever extend such courtesy to their customers in the same situation. Flying Returns definitely does not offer pleasant returns !
Because of the Flying Returns Team not informing me well in advance about KYC updating and later not giving me specific information regarding documents needed to verify my account in particular, there had been a lot of delay and I was about to lose my miles that were expiring on the 29th of Feb 2016. I was informed by their team that a copy of aadhar card or pan card would be sufficient to verify my account to claim a domestic award ticket. Just a day and a half before the expiry of my miles, I was informed that I would need to provide passport copies even for domestic travel despite my confirming every day for a week regarding the verification of documents uploaded for KYC. Anyhow I wrote a couple of mails immediately to their team telling them that I expected them to immediately verify my documents as soon as I uploaded the passport copies considering the fact that I was about to lose my miles due to their team's misleading information regarding documents required for domestic award flight and their wasting so many days in verifying the documents I had provided earlier on. I also informed them that I would be escalating the matter as far as possible and I guess that made some difference and my KYC documents were verified immediately. Of course I also requested them to extend the miles for a week or so if not more but they did not respond to that and I was forced to go the very next day in person to their city office to redeem my miles and top up the miles to make up for the miles I was falling short of to claim an award flight for a certain sector. But all this had to be done without my really planning where I actually really needed to go and this was certainly very inconvenient....I am told that this ticket is valid for a year and date change is allowed without penalty for an award flight and I just hope so that is true ! If nothing else at least I feel satisfied that I stood my ground and even if I had to waste my money on so many calls and my time on so many emails I eventually managed to save my miles by insisting that my documents were verified immediately.
ReplyDeleteSo it is always important to speak up ! It is important to do something ! If nothing else many customers feedback including mine made a difference and even though a very delayed response and not well timed in my case, Air India has agreed to extend miles of customers till 30th of June 2016 ! So we definitely made a difference if not for us then for others !