My Philippine Airlines Experience, a review
The other day, my aunt asked me to book a flight for her to Manila. It was an urgent request and she needed the flight as soon as possible. Being the obedient nephew that I am, I set out to find the soonest flight available. I selected a PAL (Philippine Airlines) flight at 11 in the morning, keyed in my aunt's credit card information, only to be asked for an online shopping PIN by Metrobank. Unfortunately, my aunt didn't know what the Metrobank online shopping PIN was.
I checked to see if my dad had a Visa or Mastercard and luckily he did but unfortunately, the flight that I was trying to book was no longer available when I tried again. I proceeded to select the next flight in the afternoon at 4. This time I was able to book the flight successfully.
On the day of the flight, my aunt received an email from Philippine Airlines (PAL) telling her that her flight is at 11 AM. Having already received the e-ticket for her 4 PM flight from Philippine Airlines, she was very shocked to receive this email. She thought that she had duplicate bookings and asked me to investigate it. I called up PAL (Philippine Airlines) and was attended to by a very incompetent customer service representative. I asked this person why my aunt received that email and I was told that the time of my aunt's flight was moved to 11 AM. Of course my next question was why my aunt was not informed by phone about this. The PAL customer service representative told me to call PAL Express. I was like WHAAAT??? Knowing that I wouldn't get anywhere with this guy, I hung up. To make things confusing, the next representative I got told me that there weren't any changes in the time of my aunt's flight and confirmed that it will still be at 4 PM. The good thing was this person was able to explain that the 11 AM flight booking was cancelled but an email was still sent since their system already captured my aunt's email address.
I was very annoyed with my experience with PAL. I have always thought that their service would be better compared to Cebu Pacific's because of their higher fares. I understand how their system thought that the 11 AM flight was active but this never happened to me with Cebu Pacific. In fact, Cebu Pacific's website will tell you when you already have a flight for the same date. I probably should not be expecting a lot from their reservation system since even their website looked like something from the 1990s.
I emailed PAL about this experience and surprise, surprise, I did not get any response. I can't believe I was thinking of starting to fly with PAL.
Cebu Pacific also has bad customer service but at least nobody has ever given me inaccurate information.
I checked to see if my dad had a Visa or Mastercard and luckily he did but unfortunately, the flight that I was trying to book was no longer available when I tried again. I proceeded to select the next flight in the afternoon at 4. This time I was able to book the flight successfully.
On the day of the flight, my aunt received an email from Philippine Airlines (PAL) telling her that her flight is at 11 AM. Having already received the e-ticket for her 4 PM flight from Philippine Airlines, she was very shocked to receive this email. She thought that she had duplicate bookings and asked me to investigate it. I called up PAL (Philippine Airlines) and was attended to by a very incompetent customer service representative. I asked this person why my aunt received that email and I was told that the time of my aunt's flight was moved to 11 AM. Of course my next question was why my aunt was not informed by phone about this. The PAL customer service representative told me to call PAL Express. I was like WHAAAT??? Knowing that I wouldn't get anywhere with this guy, I hung up. To make things confusing, the next representative I got told me that there weren't any changes in the time of my aunt's flight and confirmed that it will still be at 4 PM. The good thing was this person was able to explain that the 11 AM flight booking was cancelled but an email was still sent since their system already captured my aunt's email address.
I was very annoyed with my experience with PAL. I have always thought that their service would be better compared to Cebu Pacific's because of their higher fares. I understand how their system thought that the 11 AM flight was active but this never happened to me with Cebu Pacific. In fact, Cebu Pacific's website will tell you when you already have a flight for the same date. I probably should not be expecting a lot from their reservation system since even their website looked like something from the 1990s.
I emailed PAL about this experience and surprise, surprise, I did not get any response. I can't believe I was thinking of starting to fly with PAL.
Cebu Pacific also has bad customer service but at least nobody has ever given me inaccurate information.
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