Aeroplan, the spun-off loyalty program for Air Canada, has a Canadian call center with limited operating hours — you can reach Aeroplan between 7am and 12am ET, seven days per week. Beyond those hours, traditionally Aeroplan had offered offshore call centers in Mexico, UK, Germany, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. But those offices have silently disappeared from the Aeroplan website…now Aeroplan can only be reached via its call centers in Vancouver and Montreal, creating unconscionable service gaps for a large company in a 24-7 word.
If you navigate to the “Contact us” section on the Aeroplan website, you will see that what used to be this–
has become this–
To understand the seriousness of this, consider this predicament.
You modify your award trip the night before a trip because a more direct routing opens. Aeroplan never re-issues the ticket and you check-in for your flight the next morning and find that your ticket is out of sync with your reservation and the airline cannot check you in.
Put simply, you are out of luck — Air Canada (open 24/07) won’t be able to help and you’ll be stuck buying a new ticket or hoping agents will find you another way home when their call center opens, as much as seven hours later. Believe me, I have personal experience (the subject of a future post).
It’s 2016 and Aeroplan is a big-time company, not a small regional loyalty affiliate. The bottom line is that Aeroplan must get with the times and realize that not having a 24-7 call center is simply not competitive and leaves many passengers who run into ticketing issues or require emergency changes out in the cold.
Coming next week — a scathing look at Aeroplan’s shortcomings, but a path forward for the company that has lost so much public credibility for its customer-unfriendly policies.
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