a.k.a. How disconnected are you from your customers?
I relocated from AZ to NC last year with my family. I grew up in the UK and my wife grew up in Puerto Rico . So inevitably, we travel quite a bit by plane.
We all know that flying mostly sucks. Personally, I’ve had consistently good experiences with Southwest and British Airways. But there are two airlines in particular that I will no longer fly, unless I have absolutely no other choice: Delta & American Airlines. I’ll even pay more money (and I am CHEAP) not to fly them.
My experiences with these two have been so bad, they actually blend in to one giant ball of suck — ADD Airlines: We Suck To Fly.
Some recent experiences:
- Flight time moved up by 1 hour with NO notification (they had two cell numbers and an email address but "couldn’t contact us").
- Zero accommodation for the screw up and an 8 hour delay (with a baby in tow — fun!) except for two crappy meal vouchers worth $7 each
- No pre-boarding of any kind
- Lost our stroller — no help or compensation offered
- Broke our stroller
- Refused to heat water for baby formula
- Repeatedly ignored requests for warm water (for baby formula)
- Insisted we not change a diaper outside the bathroom, but the bathroom had no changing table. The attendant suggested we "use the lid of the toilet" to change the diaper. Oh and it was a small #1 not a nasty #2 and we had the whole row of seats to ourselves.
This is just a sample, not the whole list.
I was reminded today of reasons why these companies both really suck
(my blog, my personal opinion, free retraction with every C&D…) because ADD Airlines sent me an email.
Apparently ADD would like to expand their routes in Chicago. Apparently they’d like me, as a valued (!?) customer, to sign a petition to help them expand.
Personally, I am more likely to give birth to sextuplets than help them in their hour of need.
Now I get that they don’t know my not so secret identity as Really Irritated Customer #1,000,001, but:
(a) How can they POSSIBLY be unaware that they have a HUGE customer service problem
(b) How can they POSSIBLY expect a blind nothing-in-it-for-me email to generate a response
and
(c) How can they POSSIBLY fly planes when their heads obviously are not, shall we say, exposed to the world?
You don’t even have to admit that ADD has treated me and millions of other poor saps with the tenderness of a Militant Nun. Just offer me a little bribe and MAYBE I’ll think about helping you out.
And you know they spent plenty of money on this campaign.
Perhaps they should consider connecting with their customers for real, actually listening to their problems (none of this can be news, surely) and FIXING THEIR OTHER PROBLEMS before asking for help.
P.S. Go Southwest! You’re kicking ADDs butt by connecting with your customers and giving a damn. Nyah nyah nyah nyah.
P.P.S. The actual airline with the Chicago request was AA, in case you were wondering…