OK, I know this has been out for a while... but...
This should be seen by every kid in junior high school and discussed as part of class. Dove the company rocks for making this piece.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Why American Airlines Sucks
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!!
-------------------------
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
-------------------
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
-------------------------
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
-------------------
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
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Watch this Movie - Hotel Rwanda
Ok, So I just finished watching Hotel Rwanda. You owe it to yourself to see this film. It's not going to make you feel nice, but then, important films typically do not.
I had NO idea that this was going on. The coverage of the Rwandan genocide was non-existent. I was living in London at the time. Sure I was caught up in my own self absorbed selfish world, but STILL, there was nothing talking about this. Which really makes me wonder about the media "lots of things make me wonder about the media you'll see" What the hell where they doing? What was more interesting than 1 million people being murdered? I'll have to go and research the "truly hot news" of the time. How the hell did the Clinton administration dance around any responsibility on this? "Genocidal acts vs. Genocide"? Lawyers, gotta love 'em.
So, this brings us around to "modern" times. Sudan - Darfur. It's happening again! Oh boy, can't wait till this film comes out so we can see how bad it was... (TOO LATE)
It's things like this that just really make me wonder about humanity. First off, how folks can kill each other for such lame ass reasons, but second, how other folks that claim to be "responsible" and "world leaders" can stand back and let it happen.
We Suck!
But CHINA REALLY SUCKS... (I'll be writing more about those bastards later)
http://www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=yes
I had NO idea that this was going on. The coverage of the Rwandan genocide was non-existent. I was living in London at the time. Sure I was caught up in my own self absorbed selfish world, but STILL, there was nothing talking about this. Which really makes me wonder about the media "lots of things make me wonder about the media you'll see" What the hell where they doing? What was more interesting than 1 million people being murdered? I'll have to go and research the "truly hot news" of the time. How the hell did the Clinton administration dance around any responsibility on this? "Genocidal acts vs. Genocide"? Lawyers, gotta love 'em.
So, this brings us around to "modern" times. Sudan - Darfur. It's happening again! Oh boy, can't wait till this film comes out so we can see how bad it was... (TOO LATE)
It's things like this that just really make me wonder about humanity. First off, how folks can kill each other for such lame ass reasons, but second, how other folks that claim to be "responsible" and "world leaders" can stand back and let it happen.
We Suck!
But CHINA REALLY SUCKS... (I'll be writing more about those bastards later)
http://www.savedarfur.org/content?splash=yes
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