The Scandinavian Airlines online booking really truely sucks. It's slow and confusing with all the little drop-down arrows that requires a P.H.D to understand. What's worse is that it doesn't play well with Firefox. So bad that people have written a greasemonkey script to try to do something about it. Unfortunately that script didn't work at all for me. Perhaps it's got something to do with that it says...:
"Booking System unavailable. Please try again later or contact SAS for assistance. We apologize for the inconvenience and hope to return to full service as soon as possible"
...for about a day. I tried yesterday afternoon and again this morning. How can the booking system be unavailable for at least one day (maybe more)?!
Anyway, to my point, I phoned up their booking line and I truely recommend it. I didn't have to wait long and the woman I spoke to was very friendly. She was able to do all kinds of searches to different dates, airports and times. All I had to say was "earlier, please" or "in the evening is better" etc. Making the payment was easy too.
An interesting thing is that if you book over the phone you have to pay an extra £10 just because it's on the phone. I told them about the unavailable booking system and she knocked the £10 off my final price without making a fuss. I was actually ready to pay them the £10 just because the phone booking was such a good service. Point is, still using the phone over the web is great. Especially when the operator really tries hard to make it a good experience. Keep up the good work SAS. Perhaps one day you can do to your website what you've done to your phonebooking.
UPDATE:
Someone emailed me this:
"Yes the SAS online booking sucks but what's the phone booking line telephone number?"
They make it so incredibly hard to find that phone number for some reason. Even though they make a profit on the phonebookings (£10 in the UK) (The number is 0870-60 727 727)
Comments
Post your own commentWell, I might add that if you (somehow) manage to go through the entire booking process and even recieve your travel plan you still can not be sure to have booked properly.
This happend to me twice. One time SAS even canceled my booking without telling me. The ticket was just never issued.
How am I supposed to know that there is a difference between a confirmed booking and receiving a ticket?
Are you talking about the phone booking or the online booking?
More trouble: If u r travelling with your pets (as I did) it took 4 days (!!!!) me to know can I take my dogs to SAS flight from Alicante-Helsinki. My reservation wasn't annymore valid and I had to make another, more expensive since the day was changed! I wrote to their "custom service" 2 weeks ago - no response so far. Time to change company?
SAS is the worst airline, they cancel flights, they delay flights ---> you WILL miss your next flight, buttom like
DO NOT BUY SAS
scandinavian airline sucks
Booked a Christmas trip for my family to travel to Lapland. Six weeks before Christmas SAS have cancelled our return flight. Offered us alternative via another country to another London airport with 23 hour delay!! Had to cancel holiday and disappoint my kids. Not to mention the time and trouble it took to arrange tours etc. Kids are so disappointed.
you are right about the sas online booking, it is absolutely terible - it does not even list a reservations number
and will not allow multiple destination
bookings
Yes - website flight booking is a nightmare.
I always try to find a phone number - in SAS's case it was near impossible but luckily I found this website instead, where the number is in fat letters and in a size you can read - THANKS! (is all I wanted to say)
Marie
SAS is getting worse and worse towards their passengers.The last four times I have flown SAS, I they did not bring my luggage. Airfreight is a lucretive business for many airlines, and when they have a shipment that must go with your flight, - guess where you luggage goes - on the next or the next flight. SAS is very bad about that.I am used to most US airlines treating their passengers with good service.
My son and daughter-in-law travelled from Sacramento, Ca to Copenhagen on my UA frequent flyer miles. The new system is, that you cannot do this on one airline, - you have to have two sets of tickets. (I wonder what STAR ALLIANCE really means???).
So going to Copenhagen, UA had no problem checking the luggage through to Copenhagen. But on the way back, SAS said, that they would not do it. We questioned them why - and it turns out that SAS would have to pay for transportation from one terminal to another in Frankfurt Airport. So they had to go and pick up their luggage in Frankfurt, take it to United and check it in to Sacramento, Ca. If it was not for a lot of nice people that let them go ahead of the line, they would have missed their plane. Try this with a 8 month old baby!!!
This is typical of SAS. They used to have the best service in the industry, but now they are the worst.
Dear Sir,
I have forgotten my ID and pass word ....just wanted to inform CHANE IN ADD my previous add was Prins Mauritssingel80b,3043PJ rotterdam.
Present add Sint Jobskade 130,3024 EN Rotterdam.
Thanks®ards
Arvind
Sas has very bad customer service and impolite stewardesses
I tried to book two tickets to Sweden with SAS the other evening. No luck, when I had entered the payment details it just said SORRY we can't deal with your payment right now. I tried several times with different credit cards but it was the same reply all the time. I gave up and decided to try again the following morning. It was the same problem the next morning so I had to PHONE them. I explained my problem and said that I didn't want to pay the extra fee that you have to pay when you book over the phone. The SAS man said that I didn't have to, but here comes the bit that makes me really angry. While I talked to him the ticket price changed, the price for my 2 tickets went up £80!!! So I have to pay an extra £80 because their computer system wasn't working properly. Finally I want to mention that it isn't the first time that I haven't been able to book online with SAS
Has anyone had any experience regarding SAS cancelled flights and compensation?
I just bought 5 tickets on SAS to fly from Frankfurt to Copenhagen on August 23rd they gave me a booking number...but I haven't been able to use it on line to pull up my itinerary...they sent it to my e mail but I haven't been able to pull it up again to see flight numbers etc.!Im getting nervous...after seeing these commentsIll try calling them and hopefully clear this up!
There SAS service is really gotten worse. The USA office is closed most of the day, with no service most of the time. When open, the phone goes unanswered for hours. Truly! SAS wants you to call a Euro number, where you have to pay long distance to which is added a 43 cent charge per minute while you are on hold. Don't reserve directly with SAS there is no way to communicate with them. You better have a reservation agent in this case, no matter what that service costs you.
I have just been messed around by ALL the SAS Airline telephones being out of Service.
My Daughter is/was [I hope not still stuck in Bergen trying to make her flight home to Australia from Oslo].
All I needed was a clear telephone contact to facilitate my payment of her airfare Bergen-Oslo.Every number that I rang was out of service at this critical time for my daughter to make her connection!
I'm too old for such stresses.
An appalling Balls Up and one that doesn't serve as a good advertisement for SAS Airlines