With Egypt descending further into chaos by the hour, I’ve been fielding a lot of questions from readers about what to do.
Help!
Olivia Suarez books a hotel room for her husband in Valencia, Spain, through a travel agent. But when he’s sent to another hotel, his bill also gets an upgrade — to the tune of more than $1,000. Now, the hotel, travel agent and reservation company are pointing fingers at each other, as she tries to recover the money.
Is travel insurance a waste of money, as some commenters suggested in yesterday’s post? Meet Heidi Larson, whose vacation has been put on hold by an unexpected but common medical condition. She’ll give you an earful about insurance.
Travelers who complain to the government — particularly the federal government — get such empty promises as “look into the problem,” form letters, or no response at all.
They don’t want you to.
Cliff Van Leuven is the vice president of customer service at Frontier Airlines, the Denver-based regional airline. I asked him about how the carrier’s turbulent year so far, including a trip through bankruptcy court, a different take on fees and the likely bidding war between Republic Air and Southwest Airlines to take over Frontier. I also wondered how late-summer travelers can get the best customer service from a struggling airline industry.
Travel companies are sending collection agencies after their customers with greater frequency. Here are five things you need to know.
JetBlue’s customer service reputation trends toward the extremes. It’s either really good, with friendly flight attendants, superior onboard amenities, generous legroom and many other customer-friendly practices. Or it’s really bad (think passengers stranded on the tarmac during an ice storm or grandmothers being threatened with arrest for videotaping other passengers). More often than not, though, JetBlue does right. Hopefully you won’t have to use these names.
Hertz has a better-than-average reputation for customer service, although recent efforts to collect new fees from its drivers have made a dent in it. Still, the company does far better than many other car rental companies.
Frontier draws relatively few complaints, and the ones that come its way tend to get fixed fast. One major drawback: There doesn’t appear to be an obvious place on its Web site that accepts emails from customers, meaning that your only real choice is a phone call or a letter. That can sometimes be problematic.
AirTran has a fairly decent reputation for customer service, even for a discount airline that charges for almost everything (including seat reservations). Complaints tend to get resolved quickly, and to the customer’s satisfaction. And when it doesn’t? Here are a few helpful resources.
Hawaiian Airlines doesn’t get a lot of complaints compared with some of its competitors on the mainland. But when it does, they are typically serious in nature. Serious — and intractable — enough to merit their own entry on this site.
That’s the question Donna Passentino and Yaakov Sheinfeld must be asking themselves about Spirit Airlines this morning. How is it possible for an airline with a truly awful reputation for customer service to do the right thing? And it leaves me wondering if their experiences signal some kind of turning point in Miramar.
Delta Air Lines used to have a less-than-stellar reputation for customer service. But thanks to a shift in management attitudes (and encouraged, perhaps, but its huge financial losses) Delta now seems much closer to “getting it.”
United Airlines has emerged from bankruptcy protection as a different airline. Smaller, more efficient – and when it comes to customer service, somewhat better.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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