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Well in 15 years of booking I gotta say trying to do it thru Scotiabank scotiarewards was a PIA. First I tried booking online myself, entered everything and click submit…message saying there was a problem or product was now unavailable. So I tried it a second time, same thing. So I call the 1-800 it says to call on the error page, get a rep, go thru the whole customer verification, date, destination…gotta transfer me…transferred, go thru whole customer verification, date, destination…sorry sir, I only do flights…gotta transfer you…so I hold again, get third rep, explain online booking issue and I ask if she can check with HolaSun before we go thru the whole process again…nope, she has to try booking it herself before she is allowed to call HolaSun. Go thru everything, including entering passenger names, birthdates etc…submit….boom, gee sorry sir it won’t work for me either (this part alone took 42minutes on the phone). Checks with supervisor, and I later learned that apparently when you use rewards points Scotia uses THEIR credit card account to book with HolaSun…and it isn’t any good. (Probably explains why my online attempts were also getting rejected. They also recently changed their expiry date). So on hold for a bit, then says she’ll have supervisor contact HolaSun to look into it and get back to me. So I wait 4 hours, figured if it was going to work I’d get a text on my credit card (I’m setup for text alerts for my visa due to previous fraud). Then I realized I hadn’t been getting text alerts when using my visa or the daily bank balance text alerts I normally get had also stopped since Friday. So while waiting for the trip issue to get sorted out I log into Scotiabank and see all my text alerts have been disabled. Call Scotiabank, …customer verification….rep says she will check, checks, and isn’t aware of issue, puts me on hold after I ask her to check higher up, comes back, nope, they didn’t do any system updates over weekend…I ask to speak to supervisor because I want to make issue formal since I’ve been a target of credit card fraud and Scotia has issued me at least a half dozen cards sometimes less than 2 months apart! The text alerts come within minutes of using the visa so if there is fraud I can notify them quickly so not having them because they reset things is a big issue! Explain everything to Supervisor and she says right off she is aware of a few customers with this problem, so I ask how it is that the previous rep just checked with someone else (assume tech dept) and told me no problems reported! I mention my spouses wasn’t sending either but rep said it is isolated to only a few customers. So after getting off the phone I log into spouses account and we see those text alerts are also turned off now. I did mention to the supervisor that the affected customers should be notified since we all setup the alerts for a reason. She told me they can’t just be turned back on the the same select ones that were previously on.Going back to the booking of the trip, since I hadn’t received a text showing my visa had been charged after 4 hours (now we know why that separate problem occurred) I call back. The original rep is busy but this rep pulls up file, checks w supervisor, makes suggestion that instead of paying partly with points, use my visa for the full amount and deal with the points later. So we have to go thru the entire names,birthdate,spelling checks again …about a half hour on the phone and boom she books it and reverifies names etc…except she said middle name first, then first name and I immediately corrected her, and she is oh, I remember this being a problem before with HolaSun….so now she has to call HolaSun back to get names corrected…. So I can just see the names being wrong when we go to board or something!!!
Not impressed with Scotia’s problems in light of how smoothly the bookings have been for many many years.
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At some point I would have given up and either booked with another card or not booked at all.And then called Scotiavisa the next day(as it sounds like you spent a day dealing with this crap) and let them have it and/or canceled the card.When things go wrong dealing with big companies and/or call centers…they tend to go REALLY wrong….
Hope the trip is better than the booking process.
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Thanx Terry. At least we are booked…or hopefully booked, because I’ve not received the usual email with the travel itinerary that has always arrived within a day of booking so who knows! I only posted this because I wanted to show the ridiculousness of how a bank can make things difficult these days. Their switch to automated answering systems (phone jail mail), disconnected calls, booking systems that don’t work, multiple transfers to the wrong person, booking errors in an attempt to be more profitable. (I am a shareholder as well). It should not take over 8 scotia staff, and ~ a couple hours in one day to do a booking. (I did email this all to Scotia online banking as well as Travel dept so hopefully they improve their systems).Thanx Moncton guy. They would definitely lose business if this is where the service and banking is going to end up. I’ve gone as high as the office of the president for previous issues because aside from the annoyance, if they don’t know about a problem it is hard to fix it. Booking using the scotiagold passport in combination with points gives you 5% cashback on the entire purchase price. I’ve got a heck of alot of points right now and the card has many other positive features: 90 day theft/loss/breakage protection, 1yr extended manufacturer warranty, travel/lostbaggage/insurance etc.
I used to really enjoy the face to face interaction with specific staff, including at ScotiaItrade where I could call up and they knew me…now you get someone who doesn’t.
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lovecuba, I read your post like it was my autobiography. Every year, we budget an hour and a half with ScotiaRewards and their travel agency HRG Travel.I learned a trick a few years ago and follow the telephone directions to International so I get a professional agent who always whines about me reaching the wrong department, then books the trip anyway. I got the impression that Scotia clients get the 3rd string agents who don’t earn much on our bookings.We have lots of points, the extra coverages are handy, the 2% bonus is nice but the 5% cash back pays me $200+ for the telephone inconvenience.On the bright side, the paperwork, emails and vouchers always arrived properly and waiting on line for an extra 20 minutes always got us the seats we wanted.If there was a Travel Agent out there who wants to give me 5% off, without having to go through this, let me know. |
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l’ll have to remember that spunky. The 5% is a great bonus, which is why I only use the minimum 5000 points ($50) and pay the rest in full on the scotiavisa since as I understood, by using points you get the 5% back on the full package price, but if you don’t use points you only get the 5% on the air only component. First rep tried convincing me to not use points but I said why I do the $50. They ‘said’ to use my visa for the whole amount and they will deduct the 5000 points later so I get the 5% on full amount, since my credit card works, and their’s doesn’t! heh heh.I had to follow up again today because I didn’t receive the standard confirmation email for the booking w the trip locator info and today’s rep said it can take up to 48hrs (it has been) and this request will take up to 24 hrs. We’ll see. Seems all someone needs to really do is hit ‘send’.
I also comment every booking, that it would be nice if they could just pull up our profile with names etc from last booking but they say no everytime. Would be easier than going thru the spelling of each name in full several times in the booking. D as in delta, a as in apple, lol. Spouse’s name is always cut off on booking info anyway because we have our middle name on passports and the ‘system’ can’t do that many letters.
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Update: I called yesterday since I hadn’t received the usual confirmation email. Rep said it is sent 24-48hrs but since it had been 2 days she would request it and it would be sent within a few hours to 24 hrs. Today, no email, so I call again. This rep said because of the way it was booked no email was generated and it would be after the points are dealt with. So once again, misinformation from the previous rep.
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