Hey, Air Miles. You're Doing It Wrong.

I am a big fan of Air Miles. I regularly go out of my way to make my purchases at Air Miles locations. I use an Air Miles credit card.

But this is the sad tale of a bad online experience. No scams, no cyber bullying, just 2 hours of my life that I will never get back by being a customer of what is actually a pretty cool company… with a really awful website.

Christmas is coming, and my son needed tickets home from Ontario. He can’t come home until after exams, so the ticket prices were high. I decide to use some of my hard-earned Air Miles.

I navigated to the online booking section (if you use their phone service you pay an extra $30). Booking was pretty standard fare—until I reached the insurance page. I had already selected flights andentered passenger information probably, spending 15 minutes or so working through the process. But once I hit the insurance page, it all came to a grinding halt. I did not want to purchase insurance and could not find a way to navigate to the checkout screen. 

I poked around, scrolled up and down, and finally thought myself, “must be a Chrome thing. Maybe Chrome is not resolving the next page button." So I launched FireFox and, after repeating the 15-minute process, hit the same page. Still no navigation point!

Perplexed, I entered phone support hell. I punched in codes and numbers, got hung up on—not once, but twice—by the automated service, before finally reaching a custom service rep. I filled her in on my confusion; she pointed out that the link is indeed there, at the bottom of the page, buried in a paragraph starting with, “Chances are, your credit card will not protect your reward miles, taxes, and fees." WTF! Why would they hide it? She told me several people hit the same roadblock.

I am left to wonder: do they want you to buy insurance so very badly or they just stupid?

I know stupid is a nasty word, not really suitable for polite blog posts like this one, but I wasted over 2 hours of my life on this. (Might the word also apply to me for not finding the buried link? Perhaps. Thanks for pointing that out.) 

I hope this comment reaches far across the web to the offices of the web designers at Air Miles. I am your customer. Your job is to make my online experience pleasurable, efficient and fruitful. Respect my time.

Now, please get back to work!