Customer Service and American Airlines - Take 2

Why Can’t American Airlines Get it Right?

Okay, so I am new at this whole “blogging” thing, so I don’t know if it appropriate to append my last blog about American Airlines or begin a new one. I guess, since this is like a journal, I will just start a new one…

So, here it is, a continuation of my last rant about American Airlines…

First, I have to say that in order for any company to provide good customer support one of the main characteristics is to be consistent. What do I mean by this? I mean that in my last rant I discussed the fact that my wife and I had decided to consolidate our clothes into one piece of luggage. Doing so made our luggage weigh 7 lbs more that the allotted weight. Even though we were two travelers (allowed to carry 100 lbs combined) carrying only 57 lbs, we were required to pay $25 each way for the “heavier” bag. Now, like I said in the last rant, I didn’t get the memo, but if this is the new policy, then I will remember this going forward and pack appropriately.

Here is my issue. I am in line today in Orlando and a passenger throws his bag on the scales and what do you know, it comes to 57 lbs. Now I am standing back just waiting to see what is going to happen when they tell him that he has pay for the heavier bag. I wait, patiently, waiting, and the passenger walks off with his ticket and a smile. I am dumbfounded, so I have to ask the passenger if they charged him extra for his bag? He looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. Okay, so there is my answer, no he was not charged. I was, of course, irate, but hey, what could I do.

I will tell you what American can do, they can be consistent in the processes so when I see stuff like this, it doesn’t want to make me jump out of my skin.

Next up on the block, oh and you all are going to love this. I am in Boston getting ready to head south to Orlando. Everything is going well, we are loading up fine, we are on time and are ready to go… We think. I hear the door at the front of the aircraft close and I can feel the “tug” locking up to our wheel in order to push us back. At the same time this is happening, the gate agent decides that we should let one more person on our plane and the front door to the aircraft opens. As it does, a passenger walks onto the plane and just moments later, the plane begins to push back, with the door still open. The next thing we hear is a loud crash and a violent jerk of the aircraft which sends the flight attendant at the front of the aircraft into the middle of the first class section.

Upon inspection, the door hit the jet bridge and both were damaged pretty bad. Additionally, neither could move. If the jet bridge moved, the plane would jerk around too much with the passengers on it and they felt that wasn’t safe. If they moved the plane they would damage the door even more and drag the jet bridge and ruin that as well. What a conundrum.

The guy in the isle seat across from me says, well, looks like we not going to Orlando on this plane today.

Sure enough, just 55 minutes later, we are disembarking from the aircraft via a moving stair case at the door just behind first class (bummer, I really wanted to try out the slide – which I was informed later that evening at a bar, in Orlando, that every time people disembark from a full aircraft, 4 people end up injured). We were shuttled, without notice of what to do for instructions, back into the terminal to wait.

There was a stewardess on the plane stating that “… if we were in Dallas or Chicago where there are typically extra planes, then we could probably get out tonight, but they don’t have extra planes in Boston so we will probably not be going anywhere…”

She must have really believed this because, a couple of hours later, American did find a plane and our 2:30 flight was ready at 4:00 ready with pilots at a new gate. The only issue was, we had to wait almost 50 minutes for the flight crew to show up so we could board the plane and take off to Orlando. Wow, another fiasco. I got to know, how in the world does American rip a door off its plane prior to take off. With all the safety we passengers deal with these days, this shouldn’t happen.

Now, here I am getting ready to return to Boston. At the check-in counter I ask the person checking me in if I can have the bulkhead row. She say, “I will put you on the list, however, these seats are reserved for the gate agent to give out.” Again, I missed the memo. This has never happened to me. If the seats are free, they give them out. I say, with a smile, okay and proceed to the gate. I get to the gate, I wait for the gate agent to show up, a line has formed and I am second or third in line. I get to the counter and tell the gate agent I would like to see if the bulkhead row is available. The woman says to me, “Oh, I wish you would have been up here earlier, I just gave those seats to another couple.” I asked, “Did you see that I was on the ‘list’ for these seats?” The gate agent checks again to see that she didn’t look to see that there was a “list” for the seats and said she forgot and apologized but there was nothing she could do.
This reminds me of a Sinfield episode. “See, they are able to take the reservation, but they can’t keep the reservation. So what is the point?”

A few years ago I had ONE issue with another carrier I few frequently, Northwest. I wont go into the details of the issue, but they made a stupid mistake that cost me an overnight layover in MN on my way from Atlanta, GA to San Jose, CA. I wrote them a letter and said, I don’t want frequent flyer miles as “pay back” for your mistake. I want an apology in writing and wanted to know what they were going to do about the TIME they took away from me being with my family?

I got 5000 miles… Another good thing for customer service, listen to reasonable requests from your customers and accommodate them as long as the request isn’t out of this world. I was even letting them come up with how they were going to pay me back. You know, a free trip with my spouse anywhere in the continental US to make up for the time I lost with her would have been nice. Nope, 1/5 of a free trip is what I got.

This makes me want to start a list of what I would like in return for me being a loyal customer and dealing with their inconsistencies and hassles I have had to deal with this year.
I would like to be an Executive Platinum member for life. (I have been Platinum in the past and was for about four years running at one point.) I am a Gold member now.

I would like a life time member to the Admirals Club. Quite frankly I don’t know what all the allure is. I mean once you are back there you still have to pay for food and drinks.
I would like two round trip tickets to anywhere American flies – first class with no restrictions for my wife and I to take a vacation.

I am sure as more issues keep happening, I will want more. The question is, when do I give up and start flying another airline? How long will I put up with this? I am nervous that if I switch, the experience will be the same as this is probably and industry thing (but at least with another airline my expectations will be lower). Or, I switch and everything is way better and I have no more funny stories to tell. Well, perhaps I could tell stories of how everything went well. Nah, that would be no fun.

Funny thing is, I can’t send these rants to American. I have tried. I still get timeout errors on their web support site and to top it off, when I can get to the screen where they let you enter your complaint; I can only type in 500 words. Not nearly enough to describe all their screw ups.