Sometimes when I sit at my laptop I feel like I’m in one of those Little Britain sketches where a relatively simple operation is thwarted because the “computer says No”.
It’s happened to me on so many occasions that I reckon I’m wasting my time even reading those tempting travel-related offers that come via my inbox
First has been the long-running saga — which I have called to an end by giving up — for me to register in Accor Hotels’ E-rewards program.
The idea is that I fill out market research surveys and they give me Le Club points as a reward. I like the Le Club system; it recently allowed me to stay at the Ibis hotel in Pattaya at a very low rate by trading in points earned from stays at other Accor Ibis, Ibis Styles and Mercure properties in Thailand, the UAE, Singapore and Laos. But trying to get more points through E-rewards is beyond me.
Despite a couple of invitations, including one this past week, I have found it impossible to join. Accor has replied to tweeted pleas for help and put me in touch with its support people, but this still hasn’t resulted in me being connected.
The latest email from the customer support team, earlier today, included the delightful line: “I am pleased to inform you that E-rewards website is currently down. You might try again later to sign up when the website is fixed.”
So I did, and it was. Then I went through the sign-in procedure to be told my email address had already been registered. When I used an alternative address, it told me that I’d taken too long to complete the form and it had timed out. That’s it, I decided, I’m giving up.
No thanks to any external help, I’ve since deduced that because I ostensibly get E-rewards points from my Qantas Frequent Flyer program (although I never seem to “qualify” for the surveys), I’m perhaps not eligible for the Accor program. If so, I don’t think that’s fair but, in any case, I’m not going to waste any more time on it.
On the subject of Qantas, the episode has reminded me of the crazy amount of time I spent trying to book reward flights to London a few years ago, only to eventually be told that the system didn’t show flights in real time, so I was trying to book seats that didn’t really exist. (More about phantom availability here.)
Just this week, along with a lot of other Qantas Frequent Flyers, I received an email asking me to fill and a survey to give my opinion of its Chairman’s Club, which I’ve never visited. It turns out that the email was sent to the wrong email address list.
It was a relatively minor debacle but, in my opinion, it was not handled very well from a PR perspective. After a lot of chatter on Twitter, Qantas eventually sent another email simply apologising for the mistake of telling lower-level Frequent Flyer members that they were missing out on something really good. No carrot, just the big stick of reminding us of our inferiority.
And to top it off, today received an email offer for $100 cash back on my American Express card if I spent $500 at Flight Centre. When I tried to register, it informed me that the maximum number of people had already signed up.
So, once again, the computer says No. And the computer always has the final word.
