When Cheaptickets.com suddenly and without warning cancels John Rutledge’s itinerary, it offers him a refund. Problem is, a new flight will now cost twice as much as he originally paid. Shouldn’t the online agency do more?
Jeff Emerson missed his flight from Minneapolis to Washington last month. He didn’t make his connection to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and didn’t arrive as scheduled in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, where he was supposed to start work as a summer volunteer.
Just when you think you’ve heard it all, you hear from someone like Stewart Sheinfeld, a reader from Chicago who is flying to Morelia, Mexico, on the discount airline Volaris.
One of the cardinal rules of getting better customer service is keeping meticulous records. When you’re booking online, a screen shot of the purchase is your trump card.
Perrito is a 4-year-old terrier from Yelapa, Mexico, who’s proud of having made it to “El Norte” with his human companions, Raoul and Baerbel Schuhmacher. At least that’s what his Facebook page says.
In the customer service world, a first-class, roundtrip ticket anywhere the airline flies is the ultimate mea culpa — an airline’s way of saying, “We’re really sorry.”
And now, a little story about names, online travel agencies, airlines and the TSA.
When it comes to customer service, travel companies constantly push the limits with fees, surcharges and onerous policies. No industry does it more than the airlines, and no domestic airline does it more than Spirit Airlines, the small Florida-based carrier known for its risque ads and creative extras.
Every week or so I get a complaint about the elusive nature of loyalty programs.
At United Airlines, they called it the “cutover.” It was the final and most difficult piece of the puzzle in the merger with Continental Airlines, and it involved combining two complex passenger reservations systems.
