I always tend to write positive stuff in this blog unless I had a dismal experience with a restaurant, market or airline that I am forced to rant about it (Conti's at Serendra, for instance). A few months ago I raved about frequent flyer miles programs extolling their rewards and how my son has benefited from free travel. This time, I'd like to share my experience in mileage accrual in an airline's online book and buy facility so that you won't lose money the way I did.
Since I moved back to the university in January 2007, I have been booking and buying my Philippine Airlines air tickets online and managed to earn both mileage and credit card points with no sweat. Lately, PAL jazzed up its website to make online booking easier. While it shows the lowest ticket price options, it makes it difficult for Mabuhay Miles members to choose a lower-priced flight with mileage accrual because that option is not shown. Unless PAL's website is improved, the only recourse to get the best deal at the moment is to book and buy an air ticket through the call center (reservations number: (63-2)855-888).
Last week, I've been had. I booked and bought a roundtrip air ticket to Ho Chi Minh City and picked the lowest priced option. I thought it would have mileage accrual as in the past. Then I booked my domestic flight (Tacloban-Manila-Tacloban) through PAL's reservation number because this is the best way to get the cheapest ticket by speaking to their call center agents. After my domestic bookings were done, I asked the agent to kindly check if the flights for HCMC that I had bought the previous day had mileage accrual. She searched the database and informed me that it did not. Since I am chasing the mileage to up my Mabuhay Miles membership level, I emailed PAL (OnlineBooking@pal.com.ph) and requested an upgrade to the flight class that will earn mileage points.
I learned that I could upgrade to a flight with mileage accrual which was understandably P1,467 more but the catch was I had to pay USD25 for rebooking fee. Can you imagine? USD25 is a small amount but I could donate that to a worthy cause like Marketman's school feeding project in December. I didn't argue and replied to go ahead. But these unnecessary steps and cost could have been avoided if PAL's online booking facility provided these choices. I hope PAL or people working in PAL would read this post and relay this rant to their web developers so that something could be done quick to their online booking facility.
Because I live in the province, I always use PAL to get to Manila. I love PAL for its safety record, free upgrades, award tickets and years of traveling in bliss and I don't want all this to go down the drain.
