As a follow-up to my recent post on the “Best & Worst Airlines: 2008,” I wanted to provide an update on my rant about American Airlines. After canceling a day of meetings due to an inconvenient delay, I was told by American Airlines customer service that I could mail a letter to their claims department in Texas (no email or phone option). After two months, I finally received this generic response:
May 9, 2008
Dear Mr. Jones:
Thank you for contacting us. We obtained your email address and hope you don’t mind that we sent you an email in reply. We were eager to touch base with you. After reading your comments, it is clear that we let you down – we apologize. Your comments serve as a reminder that we cannot afford to overlook our commitment to consistently provide quality service to our customers. I am truly sorry we disappointed you.
At the same time, we very much appreciate your honest feedback. Your comments represent areas of our service that receive our continual review and we are renewing our focus on key service areas — “on time” flights, efficient and courteous assistance, timely information — and all other products and services important to our customers. The details you provided give us an opportunity to improve and you have my pledge that we are working hard to make your next overall travel experience with us the best it can be. In the spirit of goodwill and appreciation, we’ve made arrangements for an eVoucher (see details below) for you to use toward the purchase of another ticket to travel with us. Again, thank you for keeping us informed. We look forward to the privilege of welcoming you aboard American Airlines very soon.
Sincerely,
L. Milam
Customer Relations
American Airlines
To clarify, my suggestions in this letter were:
1) Improve customer service by offering online surveys as well as email support. I told them to take a page out of the Jet Blue book: be pro-active. use technology to provide more efficient customer service.
2) I asked American Airlines for some form of compensation for the cancellation of my 3 business meetings and I suggested that I will never use the airline again. As a result, they sent me a $50 voucher which is a joke!
I understand that this airline is struggling and will most likely go bankrupt soon. I appreciate their response but it was hardly timely. If they’re going to email me a response, why did I have to mail a letter to Texas? Moreover, a $50 voucher is a joke and it’s hardly enough to get me to book another flight with this sub-par organization. Once again, I think American Airlines should ditch their stupid in flight magazine and focus on a 21st century website. Look at your competition!
June 17th, 2009 at 9:16 am
I flew Usairways to Europe a couple of years ago and was not excited, but was ok and I saved some money with them. However, I just tried them again this month and it was a horrible experience. Never again, not worth the savings anymore. They kept anouncing the flight delay 1 hour at a time, and it ended up being almost 6 hours late, which did not make me happy after flying almost 10 hours from Barcelona to connect in Philly into Orlando. The airport in Philly is not structured to handle that many flights, and both times the plane was in the runway, it had to wait more than an hour just for the authorization for taking off. There were 34 planes waiting in line. Very exhausting. The cabins were dirty, little things broken (such as window slatch, earphone outlet, etc…) made me wonder how well maintained the mechanics are. The flight attendants looked like they just got out of bed, and one of them tried to keep my change when I bought a tiny bottle of wine for $7.00. She had kind of an attitude when I asked for it before the plane landed. I am not cheap, but again, I did not think they deserved a $13.00 tip out of a $7.00 purchase. USAIRWAYS NEVER AGAIN. Not even for free. That was the worst money I ever saved.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I flew Usairways to Europe a couple of years ago and was not excited, but was ok and I saved some money with them. However, I just tried them again this month and it was a horrible experience. Never again, not worth the savings anymore. They kept anouncing the flight delay 1 hour at a time, and it ended up being almost 6 hours late, which did not make me happy after flying almost 10 hours from Barcelona to connect in Philly into Orlando. The airport in Philly is not structured to handle that many flights, and both times the plane was in the runway, it had to wait more than an hour just for the authorization for taking off. There were 34 planes waiting in line. Very exhausting. The cabins were dirty, little things broken (such as window slatch, earphone outlet, etc…) made me wonder how well maintained the mechanics are. The flight attendants looked like they just got out of bed, and one of them tried to keep my change when I bought a tiny bottle of wine for $7.00. She had kind of an attitude when I asked for it before the plane landed. I am not cheap, but again, I did not think they deserved a $13.00 tip out of a $7.00 purchase. USAIRWAYS NEVER AGAIN. Not even for free. That was the worst money I ever saved.