I have been flying American Airlines as a loyal and
satisfied customer for the past 24 years (AAdvantage Executive Platinum
#xxxxxxx). However, the abominable
customer service I experienced in my trip this past week actually has made me
consider whether I want to continue doing business with American Airlines going
forward.
In my years of flying, I have experienced weather and
equipment delays, and they don’t bother me; the number one priority for any
airline should be safety, and weather and equipment malfunctions are outside of
the airline’s control. No, what bothered
me this past week was that I was LIED to at least three times by American Airlines
employees during my 16+ hour trip from SFO to MEM, and I was treated as rudely
as I have ever been treated by an American Airlines employee, who was a Premium
Services Representative, no less in the Terminal C Admiral’s Club at DFW.
Here is what I would like to remedy what transpired on that
trip.
- I would like the entire purchase price of my two
tickets to be refunded ($525.10 x 2 = $1050.20) in the form of a future voucher
for travel on American Airlines. When I
book a flight to return on Thursday, that doesn’t mean that it is acceptable to
get me home 3 days later. I’m not asking
for any compensation for my hotel or food expenses, though they were
considerable. Alternatively, I would
like the AAdvantage mileage equivalent of an unrestricted domestic flight (50,000
miles each) to be deposited in both my (xxxxxxx) and my wife’s AAdvantage
accounts (yyyyyyy).
- I would like to see the gate crew at SFO
responsible for Flight 1468 be held accountable for their horrible
mismanagement of that flight and mistreatment of your customers. Specifically, the gate supervisor (who seemed
to be a woman with longish light brown straight hair, a white turtleneck, and a
blue blazer) should be reassigned to some other duty until she understands the
responsibilities of her position.
Leaving customers without information about a 4+ hour delay is
inexcusable and providing customers and flight crews with misinformation is
even worse.
- I would like to see American Airlines review its
policy for announcing flight delays. Be
honest with people! They may not be happy,
but they’ll be happier than knowing that they were lied to and delayed. If the Executive Platinum desk knows a plane
isn’t going out on time, then the gate crew should know the same thing and pass
that information along to passengers in a timely manner. AA knew at 2:30 in the afternoon that its
flight from DFW to MEM wasn’t going out at 3:45, but was going out at 6:30 or
later; yet, the gate crew and departure boards kept that deceit going until
3:30 when the departure time magically changed to 7:15 pm. That’s not fair to your passengers!
- I would like to see the man (I would say
“gentleman”, but he was anything but that) who was working the desk on Sunday
at the C Terminal Admirals’ Club at DFW be reassigned or terminated. He is a Premium Services Representative and
should be held to a higher standard that typical customer service agent’s, yet
he was the worst person we encountered during an awful trip. He was rude, totally unhelpful, insincere,
and he misstated Admirals’ Club rules to the detriment of two Executive
Platinum flyers (my wife and I). That is
inexcusable. I would reassign him to the
lowest level customer service position, but that would just punish other passengers;
he really isn’t suited to be a customer service representative at all.
- I would like to commend Ms. Gomez (flight attendant on AA1468 on 7/5) for her professionalism and poise in a difficult situation. I would like to commend the gate agent (need name from my notes) who cheerfully made sure that my ticket was rescued from Rule 240 limbo and actually was the ONLY AA customer service person in DFW who showed some sympathy at our situation. My wife and I are enclosing "Applause" certificates for both of these people in recognition of a job well done. In addition, most of the AA Executive Platinum folks we encountered were very helpful, though a couple were not.
Here's the whole story...
"Our Misadventures with American Airlines" or "This is what happens when AA customer service becomes a worse job than Starbucks barrista"
We flew from MEM to SFO on Monday, July 25
th
and arrived at our destination about 6 hours late due to thunderstorms at
DFW.
The flight was otherwise
uneventful, and I have no complaints.
We were scheduled to return from SFO to MEM at
9:50 on Thursday, July 28
th.
We arrived at the airport very early (2+ hours) only to find that our
plane was delayed.
I called the
Executive Platinum desk immediately, concerned about my connection at STL, and
was told by the representative that there was nothing she could do to help me
-- there were no other alternative flights to go from SFO to MEM.
About 9am, the flight to STL was canceled, so
I called the Executive Platinum desk again to rebook.
The gentleman who tried to find us a flight
home searched diligently, but none was available because of load factors and
other canceled flights, AA could not get me back to MEM until Sunday morning
(leaving on AA2466 at 12:55 am and arriving at 10:10 in MEM on AA1468.
I was NOT offered any vouchers or anything
else to cover the direct costs of my involuntarily extended stay (2 more nights
of hotel) or the inconvenience.
So, we arrived at the airport very early for
flight 1468 on early Sunday morning.
The
plane was listed as on-time up until fairly near the flight and then was
delayed for 30 minutes.
This was odd
since we had a plane and there was no weather problems at SFO or DFW.
There were NO announcements to the passenger
of why the flight was delayed.
We were
just left wondering when the plane was going to leave.
I called the Executive Platinum desk who
informed me that a crew member had called in sick and they were waiting for a
replacement crew member (remember this is the middle of the night).
I went up to the check-in counter, and the
gentleman there confirmed what I was told and said they were waiting for a
replacement who was coming down from Sacramento.
He ASSURED me that this employee was on the
way.
That encouraged me since I know how
far Sacramento
is from SFO, and there isn’t much traffic after midnight.
The person who called in sick must have done
so at least an hour before the flight, so we shouldn’t have been delayed too
much longer.
At about 2AM, flight 1468 was boarded.
There was still no announcement about the
missing crew member, and I, like most passengers, expected that we would
finally be leaving soon.
We were
wrong.
We sat on the plane for an hour
with no announcements whatsoever.
We
talked with the flight attendant in first class who seemed not to know any more
than we did.
The passengers on board
were upset and restless with no information, and we encouraged the flight
attendant to have the captain say something.
She told us that the gate crew had told the flight crew that they had
already explained everything to the waiting passengers in the terminal (a
LIE).
By the time the Captain finally
made an announcement, I was afraid that the gate staff’s lies were going to
cause an onboard riot.
Finally, the Captain comes on (about 3:30) and
says that the flight attendant is on the airport property and should be on the
plane in 10 minutes.
I don’t know
whether he was giving us misinformation or whether he had received
misinformation from the gate supervisor (long light brown straight hair, white
turtleneck, blazer, totally unhelpful), but that wasn’t true either.
10 minutes later, no flight attendant and no update announcement from the Captain. 30 minutes... 60 minutes. Over an hour later, we were told that “they
weren’t able to locate the flight attendant” (so she had vanished somewhere in
SFO never to be found) and that we would have to wait and see what would
happen.
Ironically, we had a flight attendant onboard
who was scheduled to work the DFW-NRT flight later that morning, but instead of
using her to get us to DFW and finding someone else for the DFW-NRT flight, we
continued to sit there until 5:30 a.m. when I assume a flight attendant from
one of the morning flights was reassigned to 1468.
Before we left, the crew provided us with
free snacks, but after waiting 5+ hours with no truthful information from the
ground crew left many of us with indigestion by then.
OK, we arrive at DFW having missed our
connection, and were rebooked on to the noon flight.
Unfortunately, that flight was also canceled,
putting us on a flight at 2:50.
We arrived
at the gate and were immediately concerned.
There were two flights scheduled to go out of C17 at close to the same
time, one to Birmingham
(leaving at 2:30) and ours scheduled to board at (2:20).
Well, I knew that wasn’t going to happen, so
I asked the gate staff what was happening.
She said that the same thing had happened yesterday, and that she hoped
the MEM flight was moved to another gate (I didn’t ask the reason, but as a MEM
passenger her comment didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy).
As it was, both flights were delayed an hour,
leaving us in more suspense (two flights, one gate, no equipment).
I called the Executive Platinum desk to try
and find out where the equipment for our flight to MEM was coming from.
It was flight 1100 from SAN, leaving at 1:00
pm PT (3:00 CT).
And our scheduled
departure time was 3:50, so that wasn’t going to happen.
The staff at C17 acknowledged that 1100 was
the incoming equipment, but wouldn’t acknowledge that the flight couldn’t
possibly leave at 3:50.
At this point, I desperately tried to change my
flight under rule 240 on to NWA.
To do
that I had to get my ticket reissued.
We
had to do this quickly, and no one at the gate could do it.
So, I tried (given that myself and my wife
are both Exec. Platinum flyers) to see if the Admiral’s Club could help
us.
There was no line waiting for
service, and I asked the man (there were four people working the desk, three
women and one man, and no line) at the desk to help us.
He sneered at me and told me that he couldn’t
help me since I wasn’t an Admiral’s Club member.
Now, after being in transit for more than 12
hours, I wasn’t in the mood for attitude.
My wife reminded me that we could join the Admiral’s Club for the day,
so I pulled out a $50 just to get this unpleasant person to reissue my
ticket.
He responded (CONTRARY TO POLICY)
that to reissue my wife’s and my ticket’s I would have to buy us both one-day
memberships ($100).
As I said, I’ve been
with AA a long time and know that an Admiral’s Club member can bring a guest,
especially if it’s a spouse traveling with him.
I took back my $50, and if I hadn’t feared being arrested would have
called that jerk behind the desk everything he deserved to be called.
By the way, I asked for his employee number,
so I could report him, but he refused to give it to me saying that I had come
in just to stir up trouble.
I came in
looking for help, he was the one who was dishing out trouble. He has NO BUSINESS being a Premium Service Representative -- maybe if he goes
back to working at the gate, he’ll get a little humility and learn to treat
people more appropriately; though if I were running AA, I would fire him
because he is clearly unsuited to customer service in any capacity.
I’ll cut out running out to the ticket counter,
waiting fruitlessly for 20 minutes while only one person was working the First
Class counter and the one customer ahead of me was still being served when I
went to the next ticket counter.
By this
time, thunderstorms had descended upon DFW and I didn’t want to change to NWA, so
I went back through security and waited for my flight.
Fortunately, I finally got a break.
The powers that be screwed over some other
poor hapless souls and gave their equipment to the passengers and crew of our
flight to MEM.
As they complained in
vain, we boarded the plane, left for Memphis, and arrived about 6 pm, about 15
hours after we were originally scheduled to leave SFO (unless you count our
original flight on Thursday, at which point we were about 72 hours late).
