Why can't we confirm a flight schedule change online?

[dunfalach]

At this point, I've now been on hold for literally longer than my flight time waiting to talk to a "travel counselor" just so that I can say whether I still want the same flight after the airline changed the departure time. I'm getting close to 2 hours on hold now without even reaching a person yet. I get that your phone system is probably understaffed. Everyone is. But why is this not something that can be done online? Why do I have to contact your travel agent to take care of this? 

[dunfalach]

Final wait time: 2 hours and 26 minutes. Only took 3 actual minutes to do the confirmation.

[KevinD · Accepted solution]

@dunfalach what phone number did you call and what company did you speak with? 

SAP Concur doesn't have travel agents as we are not a travel agency, so the travel counselor you spoke with was likely a representative from your company's travel agency. I feel I need to clarify this so people do not think SAP Concur is a travel agency. 🙂

Since the change was from the airline, did you try contacting the airline directly? 

[dunfalach]

That's a completely fair clarification. It's always just referred to as "using Concur to book" internally, so it wasn't clear that there was a separate third party agency involved. It looks like CWT Travel Center is the agency, 1-763-329-2120, and that responsibility for the two hour phone wait is on their side. 

As for contacting the airline, unfortunately our company policy doesn't allow us to do bookings directly.

Is the requirement to contact the travel agent to confirm the scheduling change (flight times changed more than 30 minutes) a technical limitation that Concur can't submit the change online, or probably something set in either my company's policies or our travel agent's policies that chooses to have the agent change it instead of offering an online option?