We took a trip this summer to visit my wife's parents who live in the south of France. We've done this before, but in addtion to taking our twin boys (21 months old), which can be a real experience, we also took my parents. So, we had a real entourage! The visit itself was absolutely wonderful, as there is nothing better than staying with family you love dearly when visiting overseas. The journey itself was hell and it starts with simply trying to book the tickets! So, for this installment of why American Airlines sucks (and sucks BAD), I'm going to post a letter that we wrote to them in advance of our trip. You'll note that this letter was dated July 1st. We've yet to receive a response from AA, which, as you can imagine is totally unacceptable. We both faxed and FedEx'd (with signature required) to customer relations, so we know they have it!!
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July 1st, 2007
Douglas Hansel and Family
Our address goes here
American Airlines Customer Relations
4255 Amon Carter Blvd.
MD 2400
Fort Worth, TX 76155-2603
To the attention of: Isabella D. Goren and Ralph L. Richardi
AA Advantage number: xx
Record locator: FBBFAX
To American Airlines,
We are writing to inform you of a very negative experience we’ve just had when trying to spend over $6,000.00 purchasing tickets to LHR with American Airlines for a family vacation. What should have been an easy and straight forward transaction ended up being extremely frustrating, time consuming and eventually cost us money. The quality of service we have received throughout this ordeal has been poor to say the least. We are now hoping that our traveling experience will make up for the problems we have encountered thus far, or needless to say, we will never travel with American Airlines again. We are due to fly on July 6th and return on July 20th.
Here is our story:
On 4/29/07 we booked 6 tickets online to fly to LHR using a Visa card. The transaction went through and we got a receipt. Record locator: FBBFAX
Imagine our shock when three weeks later, on May 22nd or 23rd (thereabout…date not exact), we get a phone call from American Airlines to say that they could not actually process the transaction as the Visa card was issued by a non-US bank. We were then told that the only way we could confirm our tickets was to go to Boston Airport in person with the card and photo ID. We complained of course as Boston Logan is a 2 hour drive away on a good day. Fearing we would lose our reservation, we decided we would have to make the trip.
On June 14 2007, we drove to Boston airport from NH specifically to complete the transaction in person. After waiting for about 45 minutes in line to speak to a particularly terse and unhelpful customer service rep (only ONE ticket counter open in the whole airport!), we were told that they could only process 3 of the 6 tickets and we had to provide another credit card to complete the transaction for the next 3, or our reservation would be cancelled. This was totally unacceptable since all of our travel funds were in the bank where the debit VISA card is linked. But, again, to insure our reservation we were forced to use a different card.
It gets worse:
We were then charged $15.00 for each ticket (a total of $90.00) for completing the transaction at the airport when in fact these tickets were originally purchased online. When asked to speak with a customer service representative, we were told no one was available and that we would need to bring this up with American Airlines’ customer service directly. When we asked to speak to someone on the phone to resolve the issue there and then, we were told that this was not possible and that we would have to place our request in writing. Having already wasted several hours of valuable time and in consideration for other customers who were waiting in line to purchase tickets, we decided to give up and make the drive home.
In summary:
We spent 5 hours driving back and forth from NH to Boston and waiting for the transaction to finally be complete, when originally it took us under 10 minutes to complete online…or so we thought.
Our extra expenses incurred thus far:
Gas mileage : $40.00
Airport parking: $15.00
Toll: $3.00
Airport ticket charge: $90
Total out of pocket: $148
½ day off work to sort out this absolute mess: $90/hour X 5 hours time = $450 billable time
All of this because AA caused a perfectly normal online VISA transaction to go very bad.
So, yes, you can imagine we are very upset by this.
Not only do we expect AA to refund our out of pocket expenses of $148, but we expect to be well compensated (before we fly on July 6th) as this kind of experience is not likely to be forgotten otherwise.
Very Sincerely,
Doug Hansel and Family
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So, if you read all that, you'll see clear evidence of why AA suck and why we won't be flying with them again.
British Air is better, Virgin is better, Southwest is WAY BETTER (pity they don't fly to Europe .. it would be south west on the way home.. kinda)
BTW, we're not the only people that think AA sucks... check out this site:
http://www.ihateamericanairlines.com/
I'm going to try and post our story there too.
Doug
7 comments:
Doug,
I have ended up only using KLM when flying to and from Europe. I call KLM in Amsterdam to book the tickets, they are helpful, their planes usually very good and the staff is friendly.
Another thing worth noting is that of all the airports I have used in Europe, the one I really prefer to enter through is Schipol, Amsterdam. I have never had any problems there. The airport itself is also very easy to figure out, so if you are in a hurry, you will not get easily lost.
Damn, this is the FIRST PROOF that someone other than myself has read my blog.
Bless you Svein! I feel like a real blogger now.. well, a little bit anyway.
I feel like this myself sometimes. But a couple of days ago I posted something of a little more general interest on www.wisnaes.com and after submitting it to Digg, someone else actually added a digg to it. That is the first time! :-) It is always nice to have a little feedback.
I am really looking forward to hear if they ever respond. Some companies are really bad when it comes to customer relations. I sometimes wonder how they are able to stay in business?
Am I to assume that after all this time you never got a response to your letter ?
If that's the case... that's very bad of American Airlines, and I will make sure I stay away from them.
I would have thought you'd get an apology letter and some credit towards a future flight or something.
I'm all about service. If you write a complaint to a company and don't get an apology or explanation back, I will bad mouth them for life. :)
Hi Jason,
The one response we received from AA was that they were currently too busy to talk to us. (naturally, this lead me to believe that they would be back in touch…. But, nope, never)
It wouldn’t have been so bad except that our journey was horrendous too. So, no more AA for us. I also tell my company travel agent to avoid them at all costs.
Doug
My brother is currently traveling via AA booked from Pakistan and is frustrated by their pathetic service. So much so that being a significant government and political entity we will ensure that AA is forced out via IATA and legislation or pays heavily for their taken for granted attitude. It is unfortunate they have not responded to your request for $148...
Wow Mohammed, you've responded to a post I did back in 2007! So, I'm naturally curious how you happned to find this post out of the millions out there! Your comment "being a significant government and political entity we will ensure that AA is forced out via IATA and legislation or pays heavily for their taken for granted attitude." is very interesting of course, so feel free to expand on that...
Doug
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