Flight Report: Flew United, Arrived AND Lived!
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER- This is not a BAD an experience, nor a GREAT one...in fact, it's very TYPICAL.
That being said, there's some examples of bad customer service and some examples of good customer service.
3BS was booked on a 3:30 flight to Newark (arriving 7:00 PM) then international, departing at 10:30 PM.
I do my part as a good customer and arrive a full 2.5 hours early.
Agent checks me in, but then says, ‘there’s traffic delays going into Newark, we have a plane leaving in about 15 minutes that you should get on for free, I don’t want to hold you up typing here- get down to the gate ASAP and have the gate agent put you on this plane so you are assured to make your connection.” (OK, this guy is VERY COOL....KUDOS!)
The gate agent grabs my boarding pass before I can say much and it beeps that I’m not on the flight. “The agent at the counter said I should ask you to put me on this flight because there are delays going into Newark”
Sure, that will be $75.00.
Um no, the guy told me you would put me on free.
It doesn’t matter what the man upstairs said. I just can’t do that I have to explain this if I gave you free stand by. Really? You know, a lot of other airlines will do that when there are delays…they do that so people don’t miss their connections.
Sorry, I’m not responsible for flight delays.
I walk away and make it 10 feet.
“Ok, sir, I’ll do it this once…you know, I don’t appreciate hearing what other people will do.
I told the lady thanks and that I owed her one.
“Really? I’ll remember that”
(All of the bolded stuff are things that I don't think you aren’t really supposed to say...and which convey a somewhat crappy attitude towards customer service).
She tells me to gate check my suitcase (ERJ 170)…I set my bag down by the boarding ramp external door and the FA nicely yells and waves, ‘no, bring it on board, there’s room in the back’…I read where my seat is, and the FA says, Just sit in the closest open seat by your bag. (The plane seemed to be roughly 80% full- so window vs asile was all my choice...two seats to myself, and I guess their only failure was to not having attractive, lonely members of the opposite sex to sit next to). (Kudos to FAs)
So, two United employees go the extra yard to help a passenger.
But one United employee makes a big deal that it somehow hurts her to help a passenger to get where he paid money to go…at no cost to United…and I don’t know that I need to hear how much I hurt her…Yeah, she had to type a bit…And yeah, I should have said thanks (Oh yeah, I did say thanks).
And it’s almost as though it was assumed I was lying and / or it means nothing that the check in agent said one thing, we have no responsibility to be consistent, or to understand ‘standby-with-delays’ that most carries do…oh, and how about the ironing that she ACTUALLY COULD get me on free even though she first said she couldn’t…truth is she didn’t want to (not that some manager-bean-counter might not scrutinize her for it).
I should stop my griping, because I got on- still the gal’s attitude kind of sucked. I don’t care what you were told, I don’t care that there’s delays, I don’t care that the plane is 20% empty, I don’t care that you got here way early...and I half think you are lying to me.
Now, I’m also going to be politically incorrect. This person was non-US. I wonder how much of the decline in airline service is non-US employees from harsher cultures. “I be good gate agent…I do exactly what teacher teach me…you want standby…you pay 75-dollar.” (And before I am accused of racism, I can think of a whole lot of DIFFERENT countries and DIFFERENT ethnicities where they just don’t have ‘Southern hospitality’. If there is an identifiable accent depicted above, it in fact is not the accent of the gal who boarded me. This is a whole other "branch topic" if you will...and penalty on 3BS for being non PC...but conversely cue Seinfeld's "soup Nazi" and a bunch of other comedic examples...and....)
Finally, no good deed goes unpunished:
1) My original flight arrived on time.
2) My connection was delayed 4.5 hours to 2:30 AM…YIKES! (Thanks United)
3) Boarding story to be told later...Let me just say that International New Yorkers can be quite the asses- and no significant fouls on the Gate agents on that one- as much as you can see how they can't have the Emirates First Class FA type of attitude.
Man, do I love flying.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER- This is not a BAD an experience, nor a GREAT one...in fact, it's very TYPICAL.
That being said, there's some examples of bad customer service and some examples of good customer service.
3BS was booked on a 3:30 flight to Newark (arriving 7:00 PM) then international, departing at 10:30 PM.
I do my part as a good customer and arrive a full 2.5 hours early.
Agent checks me in, but then says, ‘there’s traffic delays going into Newark, we have a plane leaving in about 15 minutes that you should get on for free, I don’t want to hold you up typing here- get down to the gate ASAP and have the gate agent put you on this plane so you are assured to make your connection.” (OK, this guy is VERY COOL....KUDOS!)
The gate agent grabs my boarding pass before I can say much and it beeps that I’m not on the flight. “The agent at the counter said I should ask you to put me on this flight because there are delays going into Newark”
Sure, that will be $75.00.
Um no, the guy told me you would put me on free.
It doesn’t matter what the man upstairs said. I just can’t do that I have to explain this if I gave you free stand by. Really? You know, a lot of other airlines will do that when there are delays…they do that so people don’t miss their connections.
Sorry, I’m not responsible for flight delays.
I walk away and make it 10 feet.
“Ok, sir, I’ll do it this once…you know, I don’t appreciate hearing what other people will do.
I told the lady thanks and that I owed her one.
“Really? I’ll remember that”
(All of the bolded stuff are things that I don't think you aren’t really supposed to say...and which convey a somewhat crappy attitude towards customer service).
She tells me to gate check my suitcase (ERJ 170)…I set my bag down by the boarding ramp external door and the FA nicely yells and waves, ‘no, bring it on board, there’s room in the back’…I read where my seat is, and the FA says, Just sit in the closest open seat by your bag. (The plane seemed to be roughly 80% full- so window vs asile was all my choice...two seats to myself, and I guess their only failure was to not having attractive, lonely members of the opposite sex to sit next to). (Kudos to FAs)
So, two United employees go the extra yard to help a passenger.
But one United employee makes a big deal that it somehow hurts her to help a passenger to get where he paid money to go…at no cost to United…and I don’t know that I need to hear how much I hurt her…Yeah, she had to type a bit…And yeah, I should have said thanks (Oh yeah, I did say thanks).
And it’s almost as though it was assumed I was lying and / or it means nothing that the check in agent said one thing, we have no responsibility to be consistent, or to understand ‘standby-with-delays’ that most carries do…oh, and how about the ironing that she ACTUALLY COULD get me on free even though she first said she couldn’t…truth is she didn’t want to (not that some manager-bean-counter might not scrutinize her for it).
I should stop my griping, because I got on- still the gal’s attitude kind of sucked. I don’t care what you were told, I don’t care that there’s delays, I don’t care that the plane is 20% empty, I don’t care that you got here way early...and I half think you are lying to me.
Now, I’m also going to be politically incorrect. This person was non-US. I wonder how much of the decline in airline service is non-US employees from harsher cultures. “I be good gate agent…I do exactly what teacher teach me…you want standby…you pay 75-dollar.” (And before I am accused of racism, I can think of a whole lot of DIFFERENT countries and DIFFERENT ethnicities where they just don’t have ‘Southern hospitality’. If there is an identifiable accent depicted above, it in fact is not the accent of the gal who boarded me. This is a whole other "branch topic" if you will...and penalty on 3BS for being non PC...but conversely cue Seinfeld's "soup Nazi" and a bunch of other comedic examples...and....)
Finally, no good deed goes unpunished:
1) My original flight arrived on time.
2) My connection was delayed 4.5 hours to 2:30 AM…YIKES! (Thanks United)
3) Boarding story to be told later...Let me just say that International New Yorkers can be quite the asses- and no significant fouls on the Gate agents on that one- as much as you can see how they can't have the Emirates First Class FA type of attitude.
Man, do I love flying.
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