July 29, 2010
Open letter and complaint to US Airways
To US Airways Customer Service:
I’m writing this letter to let you know how your company screwed up, failed to serve your customers, ruined the beginning of my honeymoon, and lost me and probably others as customers. I hope that you will recognize your fault, and make amends. At this point, you would have to pay me to ever fly with you again. What follows is the story of the reason why.
I chose US Airways to fly my new wife and I to Ireland on our honeymoon. On July 12, we first flew on US Airways #451 from SLC to PHX. Fortunately, there were no problems on this first leg. However, we were delayed by about an hour on our next leg (US Airways #1206 from PHX to PHL), supposedly due to bad weather in Philadelphia reducing the flights in and out of PHL. Once we arrived at PHL, we sat on the tarmac for about an hour, again supposedly because the airport was shut down “due to weather”. The flight crew was unable to give us any information regarding making connections beyond telling us we should be fine since our next flight (US Airways #722 from PHL to DUB) left at 9:00pm. They could not tell us which gate we would need to be at, nor could they call ahead tell our connection we were there, but delayed. Their response was “everyone is delayed”.
Unfortunately, we didn’t pull into the gate until almost 9:00pm. Despite running across most of the airport, we didn’t get to our next gate until 5 minutes after they had closed the door, though the plane hadn’t pulled out. The lady at the gate didn’t offer any information until asked. We asked if we were late, and were told simply that they couldn’t open the door due to FAA regulations. We then asked what we should do, and were directed to the customer service desk.
This is when our experience went from bad to worse. Of course there was a long line since many people missed connections due to weather. Perhaps that couldn’t be helped. What could have been helped was your customer service representatives’ responses to the situation. While we were standing in line, a representative came through handing out cards with a phone number to call, claiming that they would be able to re-book flights for us, and there was no need to stand in line. This latter part was incorrect. I was lucky to get an agent on the phone quickly; within 5 minutes of the cards being handed out, the phone lines were all busy, and very few people were able to get rebooked on the phone.
I was also smart enough to keep standing in line. You customer service manager (Renee, as I recall) handed out contact information to a ‘distress’ hotel booking service. No vouchers or refunds were offered – not even cab fare – and when asked, Renee responded by claiming “we don’t control the weather”, which amounts to “it’s not our fault, so you’re out of luck.” No you don’t control the weather, but you do control your customer service response, and you failed in every respect to serve your customers well. In addition, Renee’s tone was short, and she did not respond with a smile or express any understanding of or concern for her customers’ feelings or problems. If that is her usual response, she should not be in customer service.
Once we got to the customer service desk, we discovered that your phone support had not correctly booked us on the next flight. Fortunately, the representative at the desk was able to correct the issue, or so we thought. He was far friendlier than Renee, smiling and apologizing for the long wait. He even congratulated us for staying in line, because the agent on the phone did not correctly handle the rebooking.
Because we got out of the line around 2am, and we didn’t trust anything that we’d been told by your representatives at that point, my wife and I decided to sleep at the airport. No husband should need to watch his new wife cry on the first night of their honeymoon. Your representatives’ general lack of support and understanding, the fact that the next available flight was 24 hours after our original booking, and the delays that led to this whole fiasco – some of which I am sure were your employees responsibility…to put it bluntly, you quite effectively ruined the first day of our honeymoon.
Our troubles didn’t end there. When we went to your ticketing desk to get our boarding passes the next day, there were still more troubles with our booking. Luckily your check-in desk staff came through and was able to get us on the flight. They were in fact the first of your employees to respond with understanding and empathy during this whole saga.
This one day delay also cost us money. It was obviously impossible for me to notify our hotel and car rental company in Ireland more than 24 hours before we were due to arrive, so we lost $100 on our room, and $30 on our car. I would like to be refunded for that loss, as it was caused by your delays.
Because I will no longer fly with you unless my life depends on it or I am paid to do it, I canceled our return booking with US Airways. I assumed that your ineptitude would cause us to be stranded somewhere, and wanted to avoid that. I would like a full refund of $1338 for those tickets. They weren’t used, and I’m sure you sold the seats to someone else.
In summary, if it is your intent to lose customers and make them despise you, keep doing what you’re doing. If your intent is to maintain customers and grow business, then you are failing miserably.
You now have an opportunity to make amends. What can you do to repair this relationship? Because your customer service is broken, and you have an opportunity to show me and everyone I tell this story to in person or through blogging, Facebook and Twitter that you do care about your customers and their satisfaction.
Sincerely,
Brad Ledbetter
Ireland honeymoon post mortem, part 1 « Monkey Chatter said,
July 30, 2010 at 7:57 AM
[...] me say that it was perhaps the second worst decision I made to rent a car and drive in Dublin. Read this post to find out about my worst choice, flying with US Airways. If you are an American, avoid driving in [...]
Nicole Fish said,
July 30, 2010 at 11:19 AM
Found your story on Twitter, after having my own 24hour saga with US Airways and wondering why they don’t use Twitter as a customer service tool. Perhaps because US Airways does not actually know what it means to have customer service.
I had a 4:45pm flight (US Airways 504) from Newark to Phoenix yesterday, Thursday 7/29, and then a connecting flight from Phoenix to Burbank. I arrived at the airport at 3pm. The flight ended up delayed 1h15 “due to weather,” despite the fact that it was clear and blue in the sky. In fact, nearly every flight at that time in the terminal operated by US Airways was delayed by an hour or more, with some cancelled.
Since I had less than an hour to make my connection in Phoenix, I needed to be rebooked. Unfortunately, there were no later connecting flights from PHX to BUR that night. I was given the choice of flying to PHX on the delayed flight, staying the night there (I was not offered any accommodations) and then flying from PHX to BUR in the morning, or the choice of doing both legs of the trip from Newark to Burbank on the first flights out the next morning. I chose the latter.
Big mistake. I arrive back at EWR this morning, Friday 7/30, and the flight (US Airways 522) is delayed 25 minutes to allow the flight attendants extra time to arrive. I laugh it off, but somehow knew that with my luck (which I have subsequently found out is actually just US Airways’ modus operandi), other things would go wrong. And did they. We boarded the plane as normal, and were all seated patiently waiting for the flight attendants to arrive. The updated flight departure time (7:10am) came and went, with no flight attendants to be found, and we were then told that the plane was experiencing mechanical issues with its hydraulics system.
By 7:45am they announced that the pump to repressurize the hydraulics tank was also not working, and thus it would take them a long time to ready the plane for takeoff, and meanwhile we should “wait for the gate agents to notify you on how they will proceed with your connecting flights.” At that point, I had enough, and left the plane. It wasn’t long before everyone disembarked and was waiting to be rebooked by the gate agent. Despite having an entire planeful of people waiting to be helped, they did not provide any other agents as support staff. They had a maximum of two people at the gate, and often only one was helping people. There were five parties ahead of me in line (and at least 50 behind me), and it took them 45 minutes to rebook those five parties before they got to me.
Pedro, the gate agent, was entirely unhelpful and unsympathetic. By that point I was very sensitive to the fact that no matter what flight he put me on, I would be arriving in LA over 15 hours later than I had originally paid to arrive. I no longer trusted US Airways’ scheduling and requested a direct flight so I wouldn’t be delayed a third time and again have to rebook. Pedro managed to find a direct flight on American Airlines but refused to put me on standby for it. Instead all he did was tell me that the airplane maintenance was reporting that they might have the original plane fixed by 9:30am, so I should wait for this same delayed flight 522 and in the meantime he would book me two different later connecting flights from PHX to BUR – one at 1:20pm for which I would be on standby and surely would not make, and one guaranteed seat at 4:30pm, which would get into LA at 6:10pm, twentyone full hours after my original scheduled arrival.
I asked if I could obtain a free ticket or some sort of voucher for all the trouble I had been put through and he laughed. “We can’t control the weather.” I pointed out that even if he claimed to not be able to do anything for the hassle of the previous night, that this delayed flight was due to maintenance, not weather, and I would be arriving a full 7 hours late. He actually told me that I am lucky he is even rebooking my flight on the same day. Excuse me, but last time I checked I PAID FOR A FLIGHT. I asked if he could instead refund my money and he refused.
Finally I asked him what it would take to receive a free flight, vouchers, or a refund, and he told me only a cancellation could unlock those.
Well, guess what happened? At 9:30am, the flight was cancelled. All passengers were told to rebook. Since I had gotten out of the line for the gate agent after my problem was “fixed,” I would have had to wait for over 30 people to rebook before even speaking to someone. Instead I called US Airways customer service. I spoke to a really nice woman (Karen?) who tried everything she could but was ultimately unable to help me, despite being on the phone with her for no less than 40 minutes. The only advice she could give me was to try and get on the next flight out to PHX (US Airways 688), which, unsurprisingly, was also delayed, by one hour. She told me she unfortunately could not put me on standby over the phone, but that I should wait to ask the gate agent to put me on standby for that flight, and since there were a lot of delays and cancellations throughout US Airways that day, there was a decent chance that many people were shuffling their itineraries and I therefore may have a chance of getting on flight 688. Its updated departure time was 11:17am.
Meanwhile, people with actual reservations on flight 688, after hearing about the delay, were all lining up to ask the gate agent (singular) about their connecting flights. I stood in line for 25 minutes before being told unceremoniously by a brusque woman named Joann that the flight was overbooked, there were already too many people on standby, and I had no chance of getting on the flight, so they weren’t even going to bother putting me on standby and my best bet, since the next and final flight to PHX for the day wasn’t until 4:45pm, was to exit the terminal, go back through security, go up to the ticket counter, and get a refund.
Which I did. And then I proceeded to wait ONE FULL HOUR in line at the ticket counter before being helped. The woman who helped me (I wish I remembered her name) was the nicest I had encountered thus far. I told her that I had first come to check in for my flight at 3pm the previous day (it is now noon, 21 hours later) and that though I had two connecting flights from PHX to LA booked, I had absolutely no way of getting to PHX after being kept off of three different flights. She kept thanking me for how incredibly nice and sweet and polite I was being about the whole thing and sympathizing and apologizing for my having invested so much time with so little to show for it.
The best she could do was get me on an American Airlines flight to Dallas and then on to Burbank, or to refund my ticket costs. She could not give me any free flights or vouchers, despite what the gate agent had told me about compensation for cancelled flights. I ended up accepting the flight through American Airlines, though this means I will arrive in LA now over 24 hours after I originally was scheduled to, after spending exactly 24 hours from the time I first arrived at the airport til the time I actually (knock on wood) take off, with 15 of those hours actually spent IN NEWARK AIRPORT, after having been kept off of three outgoing flights and being forced to miss four connecting flights, after spending an extra $45 to commute back and forth from NYC to Newark, all for what was supposed to be a two day trip.
I will never fly US Airways again.