Generally flying experience is very good but their telephonic response is very bad. & incorrect.
As per their requirement if any passenger purchases the ticket on the net through credit card- that very credit card is required for verification at the time of either check in or at the time of issue of tickets- Fine no problem with that if Cathay wants to be the policeman. But on two occassions they gave icorrect info which really led to lot of heartburns & stress-
once I bought the tickets on net for me & my family to travel separately. I was to travel overseas early & then after a week my family is to join so naturally I was to carry my credit card overseas. On chekcing over the phone at their Mumbai office, I was told that when I am checking in I should request at the check in counter for deblocking my family’s ticket also from credit card verification since both the tickets were booked on my credit card. On trying the same at mumbai airport while I was checking in on 25th April 07, I was told that they do not have rights to deblock in advance & hence if my family has to travel without any problems & is not required to pay the money again while checking in. On asking that if they can give me in writing or on video on mobile, they refused to do it & quite crudely so. On creating a scene at the counter, one person that is Amit Varma of Cathay promised that on the next day he will get the the ticket of my family unblocked since he had already verified my credit card, so that they can without any complication travel in the next week. I hope he has done it.
My concern is that why they can not tell correctly over the phone that I must go to their nariman point office & produce the card for verification & get both the tickets there & then. Why misinformation on the phone.
Same happened in Dubai too once. Same issue of miscommunication on the phone. & both the time the same question by their staff about whom I had talked to over the phone. Is it that we need to remeber the names of the persons responding to us from Cathay? Is it that when we ring up the Cathay office we are talking to the individuals & not the Airlines?
Their otherwise good service get a black mark due to just incorrect info on the phone.