|
Piter
February 27, 2011
Bumped from flight- terrible Customer service
My wife and I used your airline for our recent trip to Kauai, HI with our 2 small children (aged 3 and 1 years). I purchased tickets for these flights in early September for the trip in december, and due to the inherent difficulties in traveling with young children of these ages, I was especially diligent when choosing departure times, seating, connection and layover times and indeed which airline I used, and in fact paid more to fly at times which best suited my son and daughters nap times and witching hours. Therefore, when I arrived at LAX at 6.30 am for an 8 am flight, I arrived confident in the knowledge that I had confirmed seats that I had purchased at considerable cost with an airline who would be sensitive to our needs. I was wrong. We were immediately directed to an automated check in machine, which after 15 minutes in line told me I had to check in with a human as we had a stroller (this fact was missed by the AA employee who directed us to use the machine in the first place, despite the fact that the stroller is bright orange with off-road wheels and a noisy passenger). We then took our place in-line at one of the few open human- staffed check-in desks, and after 20 minutes placed our documentation on the desk, the time now being 7.10 am, 50 minutes before departure. 6 minutes after this (at 7.16am), she asked for my credit card, said something along the lines of “Its locked me out- you cant get on this flight” and promptly disappeared. At this point I began to get concerned, and after about 7 minutes I asked the attendant at the neighboring desk where our agent had gone, with no results. She returned at around 7.24, and said (and I am paraphrasing) “Its locked me out, you cant get on this one, I’ll try and get you on the 10.30 but I doubt you’ll get on that one, this one is overbooked by 10 and that one is overbooked by 4 so its not looking good, but you were late”. I explained (as she of course knew) that we were not late, and asked her to get a supervisor, with whom she returned at around 7.28. This is when things got interesting. When I explained (calmly considering the circumstances) what had happened to this supervisor, she responded by telling me “don’t raise your voice to me, or I walk away”. When I calmly informed her that I wasn’t raising my voice, she again implied the contrary “stop shouting sir, don’t take that tone with me or this conversation is over”. I was not shouting. I wanted to shout, I am very capable when it comes to shouting, I know what shouting is, but I was not shouting, using expletives or any of the other reactions I am sure she is well used to given her job and American Airlines policy of overbooking flights. I could tell that this was a person completely incapable of rational discussion, and asked her, calmly, what she could do for us considering we had 2 small children and missing this flight would already cause considerable inconvenience and stress to us all. I also explained that we were not late for check-in, and the the check-in agent may have taken a little long to check us resulting in my credit card being swiped after the 7.15 cut- off time: at this point the check-in agent laughed at us. We were then put on standby for the 10.30 to Honalulu, for which we waited 2.5 hours in the departure lounge to find we did not make because it also was overbooked. I then went to the AA customer service office, which incidentally was filled with other complainants, and found our limited options, (and I do commend your customer service staff for their professionalism and courtesy in the face of much not un-justified hostility from other passengers) none of which looked hopeful. Our next possibility was a 5.30 pm direct flight to Lihue - despite the fact that our kids were showing signs of being difficult and we were ill-equipped for a 10 hour wait at the airport, we decided to wait, despite the fact that we were in no way assured a place on the flight. At this point we paid $100 to join your Admirals club to wait in a little more comfort- this was not offered to us, and when I asked, we were told that we had been late and that no compensation would be forthcoming. We were not late. We eventually got on the 5.30 flight to Lihui after a very difficult, uncertain 9 hour wait with 2 very unhappy kids, and after missing the best part of a day of our limited vacation.
Last September, I purchased a product from American Airlines for just over $3000. This product was a service, a service to convey myself and my family from Los Angeles to Lihui at 8am on Saturday December 19 2009. American Airlines failed to provide me with the service/ product I originally purchased, a failure which caused a good deal of distress and inconvenience, and I believe I am entitled to compensation. Furthermore, your airlines policy of openly overbooking scheduled flights is completely unacceptable. A passenger enters into a contract with you at the time of purchasing a ticket, and this policy routinely (and I say “routinely” because we met other passengers in similar situations on the day and have spoken to many since) causes these contracts to not be honored. And finally, your customer service failings were surprising to say the least. In this economic climate where potential customers think long and hard on where to assign their hard-earned dollars, the treatment we received from your check-in agent and supervisor beggared belief and was completely unacceptable. The supervisor was openly hostile (she wasn’t wearing a visible name tag, incidentally) from the moment she came over, and clearly was so safe in the knowledge that she could snap her fingers and have me dragged away if I argued with her that she chose the immediate tactic of antagonism. She is an absolute disgrace to AA, as she would be to any company in which she had to deal with customers, but is for me now the face of your company. I have no complaints about any other part of your customer service- service on board both flights was adequate, but this person is the reason I will not fly AA again without good reason. As long as you employ people like this in important front-line positions, something I have never encountered with any other airline, I cant see how AA can remain even remotely competitive as long as customer service has any importance.
|
|
|
AAjoke
February 24, 2011
Flight Attendant Witch!
I have been so wanting to tell this story for so long. Posting this will not do a darn thing, except give me an outlet to rant, but here goes:
Years ago my husband and I were flying out of Orange County on our way to Orlando for a business convention where my husband was a keynote speaker. His company reserved us coach seats, along with 10 others from the company. When we arrived at the airport we decided to upgrade to first class. We worked out all the details at the ticket counter, used some of our frequent flyer miles to pay for it, got our boarding tickets, and proceeded to the gate.
As we were boarding the plane we realized that at the employee at the ticket counter put just one new boarding pass in the envelope and one of the old ones. We were told we would have to return to the original employee at the front ticket counter. The plane was filling up and ready to depart. We spoke with another employee at the counter at the gate who told us "sorry, your boarding passes are invalid. First class is filled". We were told one of us would need to sit in first class and other in coach. We were told to deal with it after the flight.
We decided I would take first class and my husband would sit in coach with his coworkers. Because we believed we would get a meal on the flight we did not eat breakfast. My husband was starving! During the flight when I got the bowl of nuts I walked them back to my husband. When I returned to my seat the (bullish) flight attendant told me I was not allowed to take food to the back of the plane. But, I figured I paid for the food, it belonged to me, and my husband was not going to eat for hours unless I got that food to him. I stood up and made an attempt to take my tray back to him.
The flight attendant stopped me in the aisle and said loudly that she would write me up if I took that food out of first class. She said I was going to cause a riot with the others on the plane if they saw my husband eating and they aren't. I sat back down and asked if she could wrap them food up in order for my husband to eat it later.
She took my tray, set it down in the galley and then rifled through the trash to find a used piece of foil. She then took all the food containers, dumped each one into the foil, took her hand and wadded the foil up and handed the whole thing to me.
Since this was just a couple years after 9/11 I sat in silence through the rest of the flight and did not say a word. I left the wadded up food in the foil behind when we landed.
Trust me when i tell you that in no way was I ever rude, loud, disruptive, or did anything to cause this woman to turn into this monster, except she try to walk a tray of food back to my hungry husband.
For years after that I was pulled out of line no less than 5 times on future flights. It became a joke each time we flew to see if I would get the SSS on my boarding pass. I finally wrote a letter to TSA (although did not write about the flight attendant from hell. Just asked them to have a look at why I was being harassed.). It stopped after that.
One last important thing to add: Right before take off I noticed there was a vacant seat in first class. The flight attendant got on the intercom and called one of my husband's employees up and told her they were upgrading her to first class. She ended up sitting in the first class seat my husband was told he couldn't have!
|
