Ticked off skiers launch grassroots effort to lift new baggage fees

Quick replies from United and North-West:

United, nice and impersonal:

“Thank you for taking the time to contact us again. We appreciate your
continued feedback and will respond to your additional comments as soon as
possible. E-mails are answered in the order in which they are received,
and we ask for your continued patience in awaiting a reply. If you require
assistance with a future reservation, please contact our reservations
staff at 1-800-UNITED1 (1-800-864-8331) where a United representative will
be able to immediately respond to your travel needs. Thank you for your
business and for choosing United Airlines.

United Airlines Customer Relations”

I always love being told my call/e-mail/whatever is replied to in the order it was received. It’s a nonsensical phrase in so many ways.

Northwest at least filtered out my last name:

“Dear Mr. LastName,

Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns with us. On behalf
of everyone at Northwest Airlines we appreciate your comments.

We have no immediate plans to initiate the $25.00 second baggage charge.
Although, I must say, there has been talk about it. I will make certain
that your letter is reviewed by our leadership team that has been in
discussions regarding this topic.

I want to thank you, again, for writing. We appreciate your interest in
Northwest and hope you will look to us for future air travel plans.

Sincerely,

Jodee Gruebele
Administrator, Executive Communications
Northwest/KLM Airlines”

I will keep you up to date on other messages I get back.

Just a thought for Harriet and her group – if you’re asking for participation from scuba divers and others who check more than one bag by necessity, you may want to consider changing the subject line of the emails that get sent out. The emails I just sent out were talking about how I’m a scuba diver who often travels with scuba gear, but the subject of the email (which I was not given an option to change) was specifically asking them to not surcharge skis.

I am a weekly flier, with Chairman’s status on US Airways (not that I’m thrilled with them, but nevertheless, it’s nice to have). As such I do get that nice free second bag, and from what I understand United will honor through Star Alliance this free bag for being Star Gold.

Not flying for a leisure sport, I find myself able to comply easily with a one bag limit, more often than not just carrying on a small bag. If I were travelling for sport, say bringing my mountain bike with me – I would fully expect that my leisure requirement could cost me. Anyone on USAir or United can check 50 pounds in one piece of luggage, and carry on a good 25 pounds in an average carry on (not to mention that personal item). If your leisure requirements are above average, above normal…why would the customer expect to pay the same?

Let’s presume that a frequent or business traveler is typically paying a higher fare, a vacationing or leisure traveler a lower advanced purchase or flexible schedule fare; the business traveler only carrying a bag of clothes, the tourist hauling an extra 100 pounds of deep sea gear. Would the airline not want to make up some lost revenue on the customer who would typically be paying them less, but costing more to haul?

The exception in my mind would be children accessories. If I were a parent, requiring a car seat, or stroller, I would expect some consideration from the airline – perhaps they could at least consider the stroller to be an assistance device the same a wheel chair would be. The car seat may count as the child’s checked bag. I would expect that parents would not have to pay for necessity items if that exceeded the family’s maximum baggage allowance.

If anything I view this as providing two market balancing acts: 1. To discourage over packing, no more kitchen sink. Perhaps baggage handling can improve with less baggage. 2. To balance the high-paying low baggage business traveler with the low-paying high baggage leisure traveler.

United replied for real – I’ve never had such a quick reply:

“Dear Mr. LastName,

I appreciate your sharing your thoughts about the change of our baggage
policy.

We have carefully considered the decision to implement this new fee
structure against the potential for customers to carry on more items.
Unfortunately, the only way we will be able to understand the behavior
this change will cause is to implement the fee. We are preparing for
staffing at the airports to better screen carry-on luggage and resolve
issues swiftly, and will supplement labor over time as necessary in order
to maintain a smooth flight experience.

The discouraging fact is that luggage handling is one of the major costs
to the airline, and in order to maintain low fares (which a certain
segment of the population uses as the sole criteria in selecting a
carrier), we cannot pass on a layer of costs to all customers. Our
conclusion is that it is more balanced to assess a fee for those who are
driving the costs.

While we do not want to drive away any of our customers, we want to make
sure we are providing low fares that customers expect. We really are
doing our best to get it right and comments are important to us. I will
share your concerns with our baggage management team, as well as our
customer service and onboard management. Your feedback will help us
evaluate our decisions that impact your choice of airline.

I appreciate this opportunity to review your concern and look forward to
serving you onboard a United flight soon.

Regards,

Bruno Kapani
United Airlines Customer Relations”

And I replied to United:

“Dear Mr Kapani,

I am not really sure what you are trying to say in your reply. It
sounds like a lot of mumbo jumbo to hide a simple price increase.

As far as I understand you use the following agruments:

1) Luggage transportation is expensive.
2) We are hiring extra people to handle the fee paying.
3) Customers base their purchase solely on the lowest price.

I disagree on many points.

1) Luggage transportation is part of the product I am trying to buy.
Having to pay extra for luggage feels like being charged an extra fee for
a bottle when buying a soda. Furthermore, I do not see how transporting my
50 lbs SCUBA bag is more expensive than hauling my 280 lbs, 6′8″ body
around. What’s next, are you gonna ask me to loose weight?

2) By hiring extra people to handle the paying of the fee, you are
off setting part of the gain you are making with the institution of
the fee. That seems counterproductive.

3) I agree that as a customer I look for the lowest price. However,
it also irritates me that more and more service providers are
lowering their advertised price by instituting fees that most
customers have to pay anyway.

This is simple deception, which is a practise that I do not
appreciate. Just as much as I am looking for the lowest price when
shopping for a commodity good like flying, I am also looking for a
vendor that is honest with me and actually delivers the product I am
trying to buy. Vendors who cheat on me will loose me as their customer.

I will tell you that I have already pulled out of internet-based
deals when I found that vendors riggled me with after-price charges
and fees. Not to speak of all nonsensical government taxes.

Furthermore, you have recently already reduced the amount of weight
that customers from 70 lbs per bag to 50 lbs per bag, and your check in
personel has no problem charging a $50 “security fee” for overweight
luggage. I have already complained about that in the past. I fail to see
how paying a security fee making my ” 1 lbs overweight” luggage more safe.

So, in conclusion, I observe that you – again – are undressing the
product you are offering by shifting an element of the product as
customers used to know it into a separate fee. You are offering less
service for the same price.

You must understand that I am unhappy with price increases in
general, and I will add that I am even more unhappy that you are
hiding part of your price in a fee. It is deceitful pricing and bad
customer service.

Yours sincerely,

Jasper LastName”

@ MrD: Interesting to see that they give you different bogus reasons.

@ CE: Well, writing an answer like this is actually pretty smart. Many people will be happy they got a non-standard answer at all (note the two posted here are different). And annoying idiots like me simply can not answer to these messages, because of their void-like content. In Dutch, we call this ‘gebakken lucht/baked air’.

I was thinking on replying to “Please allow us the privilege to continue serving your travel needs.” something to the effect of: “You should realize that one of my first travel needs is a decent final price when I check prices, i.e. with all fees, taxes, surcharge and other bogus included” but I figured that would not be funny enough.

@ RC: Have you seen the non answers from the other airlines? They are equally nonsensical as United’s, with the difference being that their underlying message is: ‘pfieuw, it’s not us this time’.

Furthermore, I actually like flying United. When it comes to buying tickets and checking in, I find all airlines equally horrible. But inside the plane, United is simply better. I think it’s that United personal has been abused so badly throughout their constant bankruptcies, that they have given up caring. They love their job, and just try to do their job as well as possible.

I probably should not say this in public as to not loose my bargaining position to United, but United cabin personnel is awesome.

Dear Jasper and all the others who are as enraged as I am about this sneaky way to increase domestic airfares,

We have been told that this is a way to keep their expenses down but, according to their press reslease they are not charging this penalty on international flights:

“For itineraries that include international flights (except Canada), checking a second bag will continue to be free and the cost to check more than two bags or items that are overweight or require special handling varies by destination.”

Does thiis mean that it doesn’t cost them more to transport a 2nd bag internationally? Or do they believe that Americans are like sheep and will accept anything that they dole out to us!

Please push our protest campaign to all your friends! Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you.

Harriet Warner
skierhw@aol.com

Dear Teresa,

Your comment is well taken. Check out the web site at http://dneba.com/BaggageProtest/ and you can see that the subject line has been changed to be more universal. Thanks for your input!

Regards,
Harriet Warner
skierhw@aol.com

I am President of the National Ski Council Federation, representing probably in excess of 330,000 skiers in 27 Ski Councils Nationwide. We have initiated a letter writing campaign and I have received responses from American (form), Continental (no policy change), United (form) and a fabulous one from Southwest. The latter I quote:
“We’re so glad to learn that members of your ski federation enjoy flying with Southwest! As a Company that LUVs sports of all kinds, it’s good to know that our baggage policies are helping to make traveling easier fo our skiing Customers. Of course, we are not able to speak for other airlines, but we feel it’s important to make an effort to increase our baggage handling efficiency with respect to our customers’ needs. As such, we recently changed our free baggage allowance from three bags to two, but we have maintained our special exceptions for sports equipment, including our allowance of a pair of skis, ski poles, and boots to count as one bag … Your patronage and, more importantly, your friendship means the world to us, and we hope to welcome you and your ski buddies onboard again soon!”
To bad these guys don’t fly to every ski resort in the US!

Just realizsed I misspelled my e-mail address with my last post.
ihonzak@woh.rr.com instead of ihinzak@woh.rr.com
Ingeborg Latscher

I agree with Michael who said
“If I were travelling for sport, say bringing my mountain bike with me – I would fully expect that my leisure requirement could cost me…The exception in my mind would be children accessories. If I were a parent, requiring a car seat, or stroller, I would expect some consideration from the airline.”
Bulky, exceptionally heavy items should have an extra charge. That makes sense to me. I don’t agree with making a special exception only for skiers, scuba, etc. I think this protest should be consumer-wide. We get charged for an overweight bag and charged for making the bags lighter by checking more than one. That is a double-hit. Why don’t they just tell us we can only check one bag- and it has to be the one that they supply (for some outrageous price of course) so that everyone is uniform and we all know exactly how much the airlines think is reasonable to pack. Then we can also stand in line and have them fold it all for us too (at a charge), so that all of our items are neatly ready for the security check too. Actually, maybe they should just supply the items they think are appropriate.
Ok, ok. I just think this is another revenue generator as they know most leisure travelers are going to check two bags- and if they all stop doing that, then the airlines can cut back on employees too, since there will be less baggage to haul. Either way, win-win for airlines, lose-lose for us.

FIVE WORDS:

ACCREDITED PASSENGERS’ BILL OF RIGHTS

@ Beth: I am not obsessed with low ticket prices, the airlines are. And that’s why they keep lowering the ticket prices, while increasing the fees and surcharges. That’s what pisses me off. I don’t want to pay “price tax fee surcharge handling fee”. What am I? A human calculator? I want to pay “price (*including* taxes, fees, surcharges, handling fees)”. Vendors try to tell me it’s all for transparency, but quite frankly, I don’t care whatsoever how a company builds up its price. Just name it, so I can evaluate whether I want the product for that price. That is transparency.

I understand that if gas prices go up, airlines need to charge me more. I would like them to increase their ticket price. I do not want them to institute “temporary” surcharges that are never going to be expire.

I applaud the efforts by the sports enthusists by complaining. But the more
immediate impact was to those tourists going to Europe (although I don’t know
why when the exchange rate is so bad). Who goes to Europe with ONE bag and
NOT expect to buy anything???

Sorry, but the airlines no longer care about customer service, etc for
the bulk of their customer so I would be shocked if they gave a smaller
customer base the time of day. They know they are the only “game” in
town.

The government is of no help. They are under the influence of lobbists, who
as we speak are being besieged by the airline lobbists to lessen the rules
for posting the TOTAL cost of a plane ticket, maddening already disgusted customers and making it harder, if not impossible to comparison shop for the best airfare.

@ Brico: You are missing the point. Everything has gotten more expensive. But cab drivers still charge a basic start rate, plus a fixed time or distance amount. No separate fuel surcharge. No separate 9/11 security bogus fee. No ‘I’m crossing state lines charge’. No ‘traffic is slow today’ fee.

Only a handling fee for luggage. And it should be noted that the majority of cab passenger don’t have luggage, so that makes it more reasonable. The guy is actually doing more work when he is dragging your heavy bag in his truck and to your door. The airlines are trying to charge me the same for a lesser product.

The point is that we (I) *want* to see the ticket price go up, *in stead* of being snowed over with ridiculous fees. It is *deceiving* to say: “oh people the price stays the same, you just gonna get less service for it, and if you want the old service level, you need to pay extra”. Just charge me extra.

They are smartly playing passengers against each other, by (rightfully, if I see your reaction) making sure it’s always a minority of passengers that they hit with their newest fee, while convincing that it’s only this little silly minority of skiers/SCUBA divers/business people.

This time is a luggage fee. But the last round was the introduction of a booking fee for online bookings. That was one, I didn’t care about. I still don’t like it. Some airlines started charging you for getting a ticket for your air miles. I fly so little (or use so many air lines), that I have one free ticker every 4 years, so what do I care about those extra $5? Well, personally very much, except that it’s yet another extra fee.

It bugs me that my air line ticket bill looks like my supermarket bill with so many items on it. That’s what I am protesting against. Everybody is paying silly fees through their nose. Do not think you will escape their folly too.

If we are airline consumers don’t speak up against this non sense, we end up with separate fees for closing the door on the aircraft, loading the luggage, using the bathroom, and breathing.

Scuba diving and skiing are expensive hobbies. If you can afford to own your own equipment and fly to your vacation destination, you can afford an extra $25 for your gear. Why should those who only need to check one bag have to support your leisure activities? Sounds like the travel agent who started the protest blog is more concerned with her bottom line than fairness for all fliers.

@ KN: “I’ll happily bring my own water and snacks if it means my air fare won’t go up to cover rising costs.”

Sorry, you can’t bring store bought liquids on a plane anymore. You have to buy your possible drinks behind security at a price of about 5-10 times what you would have paid in a supermarket.

Yet another hidden price increase.

BTW: If so few people check a second bag, the average price increase would be nearly zero per passenger. So then you have nothing to complain about. If many people take a second bag, the chance is larger you are one of them. Still nothing to complain about.

Furthermore, it also costs money to administer who uses a second bag, and whether those travelers paid.

@plet 39: So how far does the fairness go? Are airlines gonna charge passengers by their weight? Air consumption?

Jasper: Who said anything about store bought water? Every time I fly, I take my *empty* water bottle with me through security and fill it up at a drinking fountain once I get past security, which does not cost me anything extra. As a practice, I don’t purchase bottled water unless its required due to a questionable water supply in a foreign country.

BTW: I wasn’t the one complaining about the fee in the first place. The only thing I have an issue with is that the people complaining in this blog and sending letters to the airlines believe that the solution to “their” problem is to have me pay an increased base fare so that “they” can bring a 2nd bag without the “hassel” of paying an extra fee for it at the counter. Yes, it was nice to have the option of checking the 2nd bag for free, but it looks like those days are gone now, just like the in flight meals that used to be complimentary. Fine by me – I hated airline food anyway.

Kat: According to the airlines websites, wheelchairs and other assistive devices will not be charged the $25 fee as a second bag. If they started charging the extra fee for wheelchairs, I would see them as risking getting sued . . .

Note to Jeanne. Thank you for your compliment.
I got more orchid letters my first two years from my passengers then most.

I worked that job with pride. My Dad, who was a Captain, My Uncle also, and my cousin a stewardess, all felt the same way.

I do not know if I would feel the same way today. It is a two way street, and a lot of these passengers I see nowdays, and I pay to fly many a time, since the planes are full, and stand by is no fun at my age anymore, are rude cry babies.

Their expectations are unreal. What came first here, the chicken or the egg. The lower fares, the many decreases in benefits, the many pay cuts, and the arrogance of todays traveler and their expectations.

To Jasper: I only say it like it is and what I hear all the time from the cabin crews. There is no bitterness, I retired in the days, when you got married or got pregnant you had to leave. Those were still the glory days of flying.

I look at both sides, my friends still flying, flight crews I talk to privately on the planes, and the many travelers I know.

Both sides are upset. And I don’t see any resolution.

To the person who did not like me using the B word, my apologies. I find as I get older I am losing patience with many flyers and their expectations.

My airline friends, who think I am a traitor, because I side with passengers gripes many times, and I do, are happy with my honest comments.

I am NOT happy many times with seeing the lower level of service, but after reading many of Elliotts columns and the passenger comments, this finally moved me to state, passengers, you have brought a lot of this on your selves.

You refuse to pay higher prices, you will take the lowest priced carrier every time, over service and safety. Jasper, your comments are unrealistic.

There is something wrong with a person, who expects so much for so little paid.

I have eaten out many times at nice restaurants like Charlie Palmers, The Palm, Capital Grille, and the cost of each persons dinner and drinks in the “business party” was more then their air ticket from Miami one way to Washington DC.

How come. And why do men pay those prices at the Palm, Mortons, etc? Why don’t they complain about that. They say things to flight attendants now days, they would never have to the nerve to say to a waiter or bartender or Maitre’d.

Even back in the 60’s, we got frisky men. But nothing, like the arrogance now days.
These Premier and Elite Flyers seem to think their Gods.

My Great Grandfather sold farm milk and vegetables all over New England from a wagon that took him a long way from home, that was his job. He did not complain.

To Jasper