With all of the horrible options for customer service in industries ranging from communications and computers, from travel to financial services, American Airlines (AA) just won the award for worst service. Ever. And the competition is stiff.
I will spare you the chronological turmoil that began Monday, January 7, 2007 and continued over four calendar days as I attempted to retrieve a lost bag. The bag was misplaced Monday night between Chicago and New York's JFK.
By Wednesday I determined the following:
- The bag was probably not in Chicago.
- The appearance, labeling, and the contents of the luggage was clearly described to baggage agents over the phone.
- That there were over 500 misplaced bags at JFK, left over from the Christmas holidays.
- The many agents I spoke with reiterated that no one at AA at JFK was responding to the emails or phone calls they made on my behalf.
Wednesday, faced with the fact that JFK baggage was not answering the phone and that no one had searched for the bag for three days, I attempted to escalate the matter. Wednesday's calls focused on convincing superiors to go up the ladder to their management who could then contact supervisors at JFK and work down to baggage.
I was told, politely, that was not an option. I called again Thursday morning, call number 13, and still no luck. At noon I knew that these were desperate times and called for desperate measures.
The challenge was to make a credible and nasty threat without going to jail or being placed on the 'no fly' list.
Call number 14, noon on Thursday: I said, "If the bag is not recovered by Friday night, I am going to fly to JFK at a cost of $411 (true), call all the network stations in NYC (true), speak with my three friends working at the networks (false, I know no one), and invite them to meet me at the AA baggage office and have them accompany me as I find the lost bag (true, if anyone of them were to show up).
Call number 15, 4:00 pm on Thursday: "We have good news for you Mr. Soglin, the bag was found and is on its way."
The power of the media, huh?
Glad you got your bag back, Paul.
Posted by: Tim M. | January 16, 2008 at 07:20 AM
I too flew American Airlines over the holidays. With my wife and children, we returned from Austin, TX. The stewardess started to serve drinks, when all of a sudden she started collecting them back, saying "something's wrong." The pilot announced that they had to shut down one of the engines due to lack of oil pressure, and were making an emergency landing in Dallas. The stewardess went over safety instructions, for real this time, not the perfunctory way they do before take off. She moved some people out of the emergency exit rows and replaced them with some young men who looked more capable of removing the doors in an emergency, the procedure for which she went over with them. She instructed us in the proper position to sit for maximum safety (arms crossed in front of your face). She did an excellent job keeping people calm yet prepared.
The descent into Dallas was rougher than normal, which the stewardess said was due to only having one engine (my pilot-nephew later said that was a lie to keep us calm; he speculated the pilot of the plane was probably in his early twenties and performing his first actual emergency landing, and was no doubt nervous). We landed safely, surrounded by police cars and fire engines who quickly inspected for damage. The attention was unnecessary, but you can see why they make the extra effort to be safe.
Upon arrival at the gate in Dallas-Fort Worth airport (an unplanned stop, as I described it) American Airlines put us on new flights back to Madison. We arrived 3 hours later than planned, and two of our suitcases didn't arrive until the next day.
While I appreciate your frustration, and I certainly am no fan of the way airlines treat us like cattle at times, an experience like ours puts some well-needed perspective on the air travel experience...
Jon
Posted by: Jon | January 16, 2008 at 07:59 AM
Should of called 27! They're alway fixing problems like this.
Posted by: Adam | January 16, 2008 at 10:18 AM
Morrissey would have cost much more than $411 to bring with you to New York. He could just read the State Journal's piece on it anyway the next day.
Posted by: Tim M's Listener | January 16, 2008 at 01:04 PM
I had tix on Midwest roundtrip PHL to MKE for Christmas. Because of wind and whatnot my plane never left for PHL the morning of the 23rd, so my flight was canceled. Midwest did a terrible job of handling the problem:
1) Didn't notify passengers of the flight cancellation. Flight status was online, but is it that hard to make robo calls?
2) Understaffed phone lines to provide information or make changes (on hold for 45+ minutes, after getting busy signals for 15).
3) Monitors at airport read "on time."
4) Staff at PHL did not make announcements to those in the large queue.
5) Staff were terribly inefficient in manually making new reservations. They could have handled half the crown in a matter of minutes by announcing "Anyone willing to fly to O'Hare form a line right here."
In the end I flew to ORD on AA, natch. Amazingly, the plane was NOT at capacity and I even got an aisle seat. Baggage handling at ORD did stink, though.
Posted by: Matt B | January 16, 2008 at 01:12 PM
A true populist travels without baggage.
Posted by: antpoppa | January 16, 2008 at 05:03 PM
You need to take the direct flight from Madison to New York (Newark) on Continental.
Only downside is that it is scheduled to arrive in EWR around 8 PM. So, if we are having one of our weather events in the NYC area, you could arrive late. Also, since it is a regional jet, you can carry your bag to the gate in MSN and pick it up gateside in EWR. Then, you know the bag is on the plane and you do not have to wait at baggage claim (just don't overpack you 1 quart ziploc bag with 3 oz. bottles).
Lastly, EWR is the closest airport to Manhattan and has good train and bus connections.
There is also a direct flight from EWR to MSN that leaves around 2 PM in the afternoon.
At the risk of jinxing my luck, Continental has really good customer service.
Posted by: Paul | January 16, 2008 at 08:48 PM
Last year when trying to arrange a flight for my step-daughter (13 at the time), I hit the brick wall. They said that they could transfer her between airlines (she was flying unattended) even if the airline was one of their partners. I asked why they changed the policy and the person on the phone said, "Well, I don't know why, but a few years ago we changed a similar policy for pets after we lost a couple of them." That made me feel a lot better about AA.
Posted by: John | January 16, 2008 at 10:01 PM
Regarding Continental at EWR.
It might be the best flight from Madison, but they have horrible Customer Service in the airport. I was re-routed through EWR on my way to Brazil once. I missed the flight by 1 minute (really). They customer service desk was shutting down and sent me to baggage claim (outside of security). No one in baggage claim could help us and told us to go back inside security to get help. Of course, we did not have the passes anymore (they took them from us at the customer service desk). A security gaurd told us just to tell the supervisor that we got screwed by Continental and she would let us through because it happens all the time. Sure enough, we were waived through without documentation just because we were Continental passengers!
Posted by: John | January 16, 2008 at 10:08 PM
glad to hear we're not the only ones with baggage issues. we're still missing bags from the beginning of our honeymoon on january 6. thought they were located, then found out they weren't, then who knows what. while i appeciate the friendliness of the call center who handles the customer service, i find it rather silly that i simply cannot talk to anybody else. or just fax and email and hope somebody picks up on it.
oh well. no more bag checking for me for a while.
Posted by: joel | January 25, 2008 at 12:01 AM
Daughter in law and 15 month old were refused preboarding by AA gate attendant at gate H10 on February 19th for a flight ORD to MSP. The gate attendant told her traveling with a child is not a handicap. She instead had to stand in a long line in a freezing ramp.
I have traveled a lot all over the world and have never seen this happen.
Posted by: Jan | February 19, 2008 at 03:01 PM