Bad Experience With EZAir and Customer Relations

[tct7777]

First time ever posting to the forums. I felt someone else especially new cruisers may benefit from this so they don't get stuck. Several months ago we booked an Alaska cruise through the Princess website. We used EZAir for our flights like we always had in the past. The night before the cruise I tried to do online check in and the airline's website wouldn't let us. A message came up stating not enough time for connections please contact airline immediately. When I called them the gentleman I spoke to said the same thing but he said it may be very close and as long as there is no delay we should make it. He said princess should have caught this when we booked. He also said he could not check us in. Because of that connection flag we would have to check in at the airport. After I got off the phone with him I called Princess. The person I spoke with stated they did not see a problem and we should be fine. When we arrived at the airport and tried to check in the same thing happened. The supervisor that was helping us stated that even if we made it our luggage never would. He said the baggage handlers would never have enough time to get our bags to the other side of the airport as it was a different airline for that leg of the trip. I asked if he was sure and he said he had been with the airline for 20 years and he was sure our luggage wouldn't make it. He doubted we would make it unless we ran across the airport. Thankfully he (the airline check in supervisor) moved us to a slightly earlier flight that connected through a different city and solved the problem. If this guy had not been on his game and just did an override on the alert allowing us to check in who knows what would have happened.

When we got onboard guest services emailed ezair and the response was Princess would never book someone on a flight without enough connection time. When we got home yesterday I called guest relations and the lady we spoke to said the exact same thing. Almost from script. She said rather arrogantly that the airline employee must have been mistaken because Princess would never allow that to happen.

So I guess the lesson is Princess knows airlines better than the actual airlines do. Those messages that airlines have set in their computer to keep people from being stranded at an airport far from home mean nothing. A 20 year airline employee's knowledge of his company are nothing compared to Princess cruise lines.

I love every other aspect of Princess Cruises. The onboard staff are amazing. They treat you like royalty. Customer relations and EZair have some issues.

My wife and I are really ticked off about this. I just wanted to share this because we almost had a cruise that we had saved up for ruined because of some problem that Princess refuses to even investigate.

[Astro Flyer]

Sorry to hear about your poor experience & thankfully you were able to get it adjusted to make your connection with your luggage. :)

 

However I think this may be more of an airline reservation problem because I've booked directly with airlines & had very minimal connection times. Whenever I question it the airlines say it's doable and they book my flight. If uncomfortable with the connection time, I book an itinerary with more connection time. I've had good eZAir experiences & I can view the connection times the airlines says are doable & if concerned I'll book a different itinerary.

 

I don't think that Princess creates their own routings & connections and are merely selling what airlines schedule. I'd think this is more of an airlines scheduling issue & airlines allowing itineraries with too little connection time to be available for purchase.

 

I don't understand why the airline would red flag your reservation & not contact you to make a doable connection for you. Or at the very least to inform Princess to contact you about a red flag conflict to change your reservation.

 

You may never know who was to blame but I believe that Princess only sells flights that an airline schedules & if the connection time was too close then I'd blame the airline for scheduling it.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Astro Flyer

[SoCal Cruiser78]

I'm sorry that you had such a bad experience with eZAir, but are glad you posted as I have held off on using it. I booked air many years ago through another cruise line's similar program, with a bad result also. I have always booked my air independently since.

 

I am anxious to see how eZAir regular users respond, and how any follow up with Princess is responded to as well.

Edited September 11, 2015 by SoCal Cruiser78

[All That Jazz]

Every airport has an established MCT (minimum connecting time) for all possible combinations of domestic to domestic, domestic to international, international to domestic, and international to international. Factor in which airlines and terminals for additional variables. These times can be found with the KVS tool (paid subscription) for flight information.

 

Airlines will not sell a ticket with a connection that violates the MCT for that particular set of variables. Sounds like Princess cobbled together separate tickets that circumvented the MCT. And didn't much care.

 

There is a wealth of information on the cruise air boards about the risks and benefits of cruise air, EZ air, whatever each cruise line wants to call it. Caveat emptor.

[whatcruiseisnext]

First time ever posting to the forums. I felt someone else especially new cruisers may benefit from this so they don't get stuck. Several months ago we booked an Alaska cruise through the Princess website. We used EZAir for our flights like we always had in the past. The night before the cruise I tried to do online check in and the airline's website wouldn't let us. A message came up stating not enough time for connections please contact airline immediately. When I called them the gentleman I spoke to said the same thing but he said it may be very close and as long as there is no delay we should make it. He said princess should have caught this when we booked. He also said he could not check us in. Because of that connection flag we would have to check in at the airport. After I got off the phone with him I called Princess. The person I spoke with stated they did not see a problem and we should be fine. When we arrived at the airport and tried to check in the same thing happened. The supervisor that was helping us stated that even if we made it our luggage never would. He said the baggage handlers would never have enough time to get our bags to the other side of the airport as it was a different airline for that leg of the trip. I asked if he was sure and he said he had been with the airline for 20 years and he was sure our luggage wouldn't make it. He doubted we would make it unless we ran across the airport. Thankfully he (the airline check in supervisor) moved us to a slightly earlier flight that connected through a different city and solved the problem. If this guy had not been on his game and just did an override on the alert allowing us to check in who knows what would have happened.

When we got onboard guest services emailed ezair and the response was Princess would never book someone on a flight without enough connection time. When we got home yesterday I called guest relations and the lady we spoke to said the exact same thing. Almost from script. She said rather arrogantly that the airline employee must have been mistaken because Princess would never allow that to happen.

So I guess the lesson is Princess knows airlines better than the actual airlines do. Those messages that airlines have set in their computer to keep people from being stranded at an airport far from home mean nothing. A 20 year airline employee's knowledge of his company are nothing compared to Princess cruise lines.

I love every other aspect of Princess Cruises. The onboard staff are amazing. They treat you like royalty. Customer relations and EZair have some issues.

My wife and I are really ticked off about this. I just wanted to share this because we almost had a cruise that we had saved up for ruined because of some problem that Princess refuses to even investigate.

 

Princess could have booked you on a flight with acceptable times at the time you booked and then the airlines changed the flight times. We have had airlines change flight times on us multiple times after booking. A couple times after the airlines made changes the airlines had our connecting flight taking off prior to our initial flight landing! We were never notified by the airlines but only became aware of the issue/problem after checking on our flight on the airlines website. Our reservations then also had been red flagged but no notification was sent to us by the airline. These were not with EZ air but the airline directly.

 

What was your connection time? When you picked your flight with EZ air why did you pick a flight with such a tight connection? If the times were changed by the airline after you booked, why weren't you routinely checking on the airlines website for changes? You said you were using the airlines website to try to check in so you had access to the reservation on their site. It would have been easy to look at it weekly. There would have been time to adjust the flights if you had noticed this earlier. It states on EZ air when booking that it is your responsibility to check with the airlines for changes and to verify times directly with the airlines you are booked on. I am sorry you got caught in this snafu but ultimately is was your responsibility to check the flight times and connection times you booked on EZ air and then to follow up to make sure there had been no changes.

[tennisobo]

Maybe Princess should change the name from EZ Air to something else if you have to check the airline website every week to make sure the reservation is still doable. That is definitely not EZ Air. It is High Maintenance Air.

[Potstech]

Would be nive to know the flight schedules and connecting times at each airport to see what the OP is talking about. What might work at one airport may not work at another. Or is this another post a complaint and disappear?

[capriccio]

Maybe Princess should change the name from EZ Air to something else if you have to check the airline website every week to make sure the reservation is still doable. That is definitely not EZ Air. It is High Maintenance Air.

 

i have no experience with Princess Air but as others have said, flight time changes rendering a connection impossible is an airline problem that doesn't care who (the travelers, a TA, a cruise line, etc.) made the flight reservations.

 

We normally book our cruises a year or more in advance and then book our flights as soon as they open. Just about every flight we have booked in the past few years has had a change (some multiple) in scheduled departure/arrival times. Usually it is just a few minutes, but other times it has been 30 minutes or more. When making connections that 30 minutes can make a huge difference.

 

I think it is the traveler's responsibility to monitor the situation - I wouldn't trust anyone else and especially not the airline!

Edited September 11, 2015 by capriccio

[kruisey]

Several years ago booked my flights and times with Princess,using a specific airline.

Nearer the time I looked at the booking again and found they had been changed from my Airline of choice to a completely different airline with different times.I phoned Princess Air and got it changed back again. Thank goodness I did not look near the travel date and picked this up sooner.No explanation was ever given to me.

[partybarbie]

We have used EZ Air (with multiple connections from California to Europe) in the past and have been happy with it. I do agree with you that some of the connections seemed rather "tight" to me, and I wouldn't book those flights. I like to leave at least two hours between connections. This way it gives me a little time for delays, a chance to grab a snack or a drink, time to make a restroom stop, DH gets to have a cigarette, etc. There's nothing worse than feeling rushed at the airport.

[whatcruiseisnext]

Maybe Princess should change the name from EZ Air to something else if you have to check the airline website every week to make sure the reservation is still doable. That is definitely not EZ Air. It is High Maintenance Air.

 

EZ Air/Princess has NO control over changes that the airline makes to their flights. Princess probably isn't even notified by the airlines of any changes.

[RDC1]

First time ever posting to the forums. I felt someone else especially new cruisers may benefit from this so they don't get stuck. Several months ago we booked an Alaska cruise through the Princess website. We used EZAir for our flights like we always had in the past. The night before the cruise I tried to do online check in and the airline's website wouldn't let us. A message came up stating not enough time for connections please contact airline immediately. When I called them the gentleman I spoke to said the same thing but he said it may be very close and as long as there is no delay we should make it. He said princess should have caught this when we booked. He also said he could not check us in. Because of that connection flag we would have to check in at the airport. After I got off the phone with him I called Princess. The person I spoke with stated they did not see a problem and we should be fine. When we arrived at the airport and tried to check in the same thing happened. The supervisor that was helping us stated that even if we made it our luggage never would. He said the baggage handlers would never have enough time to get our bags to the other side of the airport as it was a different airline for that leg of the trip. I asked if he was sure and he said he had been with the airline for 20 years and he was sure our luggage wouldn't make it. He doubted we would make it unless we ran across the airport. Thankfully he (the airline check in supervisor) moved us to a slightly earlier flight that connected through a different city and solved the problem. If this guy had not been on his game and just did an override on the alert allowing us to check in who knows what would have happened.

When we got onboard guest services emailed ezair and the response was Princess would never book someone on a flight without enough connection time. When we got home yesterday I called guest relations and the lady we spoke to said the exact same thing. Almost from script. She said rather arrogantly that the airline employee must have been mistaken because Princess would never allow that to happen.

So I guess the lesson is Princess knows airlines better than the actual airlines do. Those messages that airlines have set in their computer to keep people from being stranded at an airport far from home mean nothing. A 20 year airline employee's knowledge of his company are nothing compared to Princess cruise lines.

I love every other aspect of Princess Cruises. The onboard staff are amazing. They treat you like royalty. Customer relations and EZair have some issues.

My wife and I are really ticked off about this. I just wanted to share this because we almost had a cruise that we had saved up for ruined because of some problem that Princess refuses to even investigate.

 

What airlines, which connecting airport, with how much connecting were you booked on originally?

 

What airlines were you on through the other airport?

[eandj]

Maybe Princess should change the name from EZ Air to something else if you have to check the airline website every week to make sure the reservation is still doable. That is definitely not EZ Air. It is High Maintenance Air.

 

AGREE. By having any cruiseline book your flights , you have added a middle man. More chance for things to go awry. It's one thing to get an email from an airline telling you the flight time changed. Not fun, but manageable when you have done the booking yourself.

But as pointed out. when you have the cruiseline to deal with in hopes that they will keep you informed of what the airline is doing, you set yourself up for confusion and errors.

And then who can be blamed? If the cruiseline offers the service of arranging the air for you, and you "hire" them to do it for you...I think they are ultimately responsible.

 

Does ezair have something in the contract that says changes in flights are not their responsibility and not their responsibility to inform you? If so, then why would any one "hire" a cruise line to book a flight? And if not...you have a valid complaint with the cruiseline. They are working as your agent.

 

We have learned to book our own flights (for any cruiseline) to avoid this kind of confusion.

Edited September 11, 2015 by eandj

[alaskagirl2010]

It's not only EZ Air, it's all of them irregardless how you book it. I usually book independently, spending significant time getting exactly what I want, and 90% of the time the booking changes. Just yesterday, a non-stop flight I booked (because it was non-stop) changed to 2 flights with a lay over. All you are getting when you book is a seat to get you there. How they get you there is totally in the airline's control.

As other posters mentioned, it's very important to keep an eye on your flight arrangements.

[Matcodixon]

I travel often and book my own flights almost exclusively, however when we were booking our Grand Med cruise, what was available on EZ air was at a much better price than anything I could find anywhere else. I checked the connection time and it was enough for a relaxed dinner stop. Flying to Venice from the west coast is a long trip no matter how you look at it. There are some guarantees that came with EZair regarding delays etc, and I know that they have held up sailing when waiting for a delayed flight with EZair passengers on board.

 

Now I always arrive a day early to any cruise and in the case of the Med cruise, we arrived 2 days early.

 

Would I use EZair again? Definitely, depending on the where and the how far.

 

Within the US? doubtful, but I will always check their price and choices.

 

Your results may vary.

 

Dixon

[eandj]

Your results may vary.

Dixon

 

Yep. The Op noted they always used ezair in the past. So they must have had success then.

So.. just cross your fingers and hope for the best results.:o

[AJs Grandpa]

...flight time changes rendering a connection impossible is an airline problem that doesn't care who (the travelers, a TA, a cruise line, etc.)

 

I think it is the traveler's responsibility to monitor the situation - I wouldn't trust anyone else and especially not the airline!

 

Well said. We can debate whether it should be that way, but anyone who books flights well in advance knows that is often the case. I just treat frequent checking on flights part of the pre-planning fun.

[W5KAP]

EZ Air/Princess has NO control over changes that the airline makes to their flights. Princess probably isn't even notified by the airlines of any changes.

 

And i'll tell one other unintended consequence; Earlier this year, we were flying from Phoenix to Honolulu to Auckland. A very long day to be sure. So wayyyyy ahead of time, we picked our seats so as to be in the rows of two on the side. That way the only people we bothered would be each other if we needed to get up. Well, unknown to us, the airline changed the flight time by 5 minutes. No change in flight number and a really insignificant thing right? Wrong! This somehow invalidated our seats and so when I finally checked on the flights two weeks before, I was surprised to see we didn't have assigned seats. To make a long story short, we ended up in the middle seats on a wide body jet for 6 hours to Honolulu and the same on a 9 1/2 hour flight to Auckland. Now we made it OK and the price was very good. But this is a lesson to all who use EZAir. pay attention either through EZAir or the actual carrier long before the flight so you can catch these things and react before it's too late. We will use them again but we will be watching very carefully you can be sure.

 

Cheers, Kenn

[SoCal Cruiser78]

...By having any cruiseline book your flights , you have added a middle man. More chance for things to go awry...We have learned to book our own flights (for any cruiseline) to avoid this kind of confusion.

 

I agree--especially when the cruise line cobbles your flights together using different carriers for each leg of the trip. This happened to me with another cruise line. With that said, I might try eZAir in the future if pricing were WAY below that of booking directly, which does appear to be the case from SoCal to Europe and the UK at times.

Edited September 11, 2015 by SoCal Cruiser78

[eandj]

So wayyyyy ahead of time, we picked our seats so as to be in the rows of two on the side. That way the only people we bothered would be each other if we needed to get up. Well, unknown to us, the airline changed the flight time by 5 minutes. .

 

Cheers, Kenn

 

This happened to our good frineds. They had their seats for their overseas flight. Got to the airport and the airline had switched to a smaller plane. At random, their seats were reassigned and they were told they would have to take the next flight...the next morning! They had booked with an agent who via phone, spoke to the airline agent, but got no where.

The only thing that got them on the flight, (in awful seats right by the bathroom) was a connecting flight was delayed and that left those their seats open. Still they had no idea why they were the lucky ones to be bumped from the smaller plane.

 

Ahhh...flying is wonderful, isn't it?

[Colo Cruiser]

Welcome to Cruise Critic!! Post often!! :)

[SoCal Cruiser78]

Ahhh...flying is wonderful, isn't it?

 

I'm old enough to remember when it actually was. These days, not so much :(.

[whatcruiseisnext]

AGREE. By having any cruiseline book your flights , you have added a middle man. More chance for things to go awry. It's one thing to get an email from an airline telling you the flight time changed. Not fun, but manageable when you have done the booking yourself.

But as pointed out. when you have the cruiseline to deal with in hopes that they will keep you informed of what the airline is doing, you set yourself up for confusion and errors.

And then who can be blamed? If the cruiseline offers the service of arranging the air for you, and you "hire" them to do it for you...I think they are ultimately responsible.

 

Does ezair have something in the contract that says changes in flights are not their responsibility and not their responsibility to inform you? If so, then why would any one "hire" a cruise line to book a flight? And if not...you have a valid complaint with the cruiseline. They are working as your agent.

 

We have learned to book our own flights (for any cruiseline) to avoid this kind of confusion.

 

 

When you book EZ air it states that "reconfirming flights is the guests responsibility".

 

We normally book flights on our own. However, we are using EZ air for a transatlantic one way flight. We could not come close to the price on our own. On the airlines site it is well over $2500.00pp. We purchased through EZ air for $475pp. It is definitely worth it to us to monitor the airlines website to watch for any changes. This is not different than we would be doing if we had purchased the flight on our own. The EZ flight shows up on our account page on our airlines website right next to the other flights that we have purchased on our own. I certainly don't see monitoring flight changes as an inconvenience when I can save that kind of money.

Edited September 11, 2015 by whatcruiseisnext

[Astro Flyer]

We booked Lufthansa directly last November to Munich & it was that a big mess! :(

 

We prepaid to make seat reservations & by watching my reservation discovered that our flight from LAX to Frankfurt no longer had seat assignments. I called them & despite being their computer's fault we eventually were assigned different less desirable seats on the same type of aircraft.

 

Checking later they had us flying on one day only to FRA and the next day again to FRA & connecting the MUC! Again, I had to call them to fix the problem because their computer failed to recognize an even worse screwup. Their computer didn't generate any notification despite having flights to FRA on 2 consecutive days & only a connecting flight to MUC on the 2nd day which would've resulted in missing our river cruise. So the OP not receiving any notification about a flagged too short of a connection time isn't surprising to me.

 

Sadly it's become necessary to regular check flights because we cannot depend upon airlines to notify us about changes...even those resulting in being flagged as impossible to make a connection. Based on my experience their computers are not programmed properly to even recognize conflicts in reservations & not to always make notifications and even if emailed it could go to a junk folder & be deleted,

 

By being proactive & before calling the airlines about changes that won't work, I first check the airline's schedule for better flight options including a different routing. I've called them & an agent made the changes for us...humans are many times able to make changes to computer mistakes.

 

Airlines schedule flights which are sold by sources such as TAs & cruise lines and when airlines make schedule changes they do not always inform the booking source nor passengers about changes. I know this happens even when booking directly with an airline so I would blame the airline & not any secondary flight booking agent...including eZAir.

Edited September 11, 2015 by Astro Flyer

[PSCSkipper]

We are a bit over a month out from our upcoming cruise so I thought I better check our flight arrangements from Washington, DC, to Vancouver, BC, and return. Since we are flying in a day early, I made our own flight reservations and did not use the Princess EZAir option although I have used it before.

 

When I checked our reservations I discovered that United Airlines had changed our flights to route us through Los Angeles (LAX) on our return trip. The problem, however, was that the flights United changed us to gave us only 17 minutes to change planes in Los Angeles. There is no way we could make that short a connection even if our flight to LAX arrived on time (doubtful).

 

I called United and explained the problem. United changed our return flights without any problem and without any change fees. I was pretty happy. In fact we ended up with better flights than we started out with.

 

The bottom line is that, if you are flying to your ship, make sure you check your flight arrangements to see if they have changed and to make sure that your connection times (if any) are reasonable. As others have said, the airlines make these changes and don't always notify their passengers. Yes they should, but don't leave it to chance (or the airline).