Entries Tagged 'Customer Service' ↓

Adobe and Omniture were recently caught for snooping on its CS3 users. The story has been covered in other sources as well, so I won’t regurgitate it here. Suffice it to say, it’s really disturbing to see software we use every day from reputable companies like Adobe and Omniture stooping to these low-life, black hat hacker tactics to spy on their own base. What’s wrong with a survey, Adobe? I’ve filled out every one you’ve sent me since 1990. I won’t anymore.

So after posting last month that it seemed like Northwest was getting better, I must change my tune. I experienced the worst airline experience I’ve ever had. A routine trip to our L.A. office:

1. Flight out: 10 mins late boarding.
2. “Please deplane, we are over the weight restriction.” Whatever that means. Don’t they know how much a plane can hold by now?
3. “Please board the new plane in 45 minutes.” Ugh. Fine.
4. (45 minutes becomes an hour and a half)
5. Second plane has a broken start valve
6. About 45 minutes later, the start valve is fixed and we leave
7. We are now 2 hours late departing and will have 15 minutes to get from LAX to the Campbell-Ewald L.A. office.
8. Once over the Rockies, we were bouncing with a turbulence that the Cedar Point Amusement Park would be envious of. Admittedly, this is not Northwest’s fault, nor is it under their control. I leave it in only because it made the ride that much worse.
9. Then we begin choking on the smell of the fires over Malibu, et al. Again, not Northwest’s fault.
10. We finally land, a 4-1/2 hour trip became 8 hours

I recently flew to Miami with a friend. We purchased what we thought were direct flights (according to Priceline), however after departing, we were told that the flight would be stopping over in Chicago before continuing. A minor annoyance, but at the time, confusing as we and several other passengers were unaware of this until we actually began to land in Chicago.

Today I received an email apology from Priceline:

It has come to our attention that your trip that departed from Detroit - Wayne County(DTW) on 9/13/2007 involved an intermediate stop which may not have been disclosed prior to purchase.

We apologize for any inconvenience. As an expression of our thanks for your business, and with regard to any inconvenience this may have caused, we will be processing a credit of $50 per ticket to the credit card used for this purchase.

That’s fantastic. What a nice way to handle that and ensure that I will definitely be using Priceline again.

All I see on the local news in Detroit lately is how poor the airlines are doing and how many flights are being canceled. In particular, Northwest has become the whipping boy for the local news affiliates. For the most part, they are correct. Too many flights are canceled, too much luggage is lost. I’d like to balance it a bit with a recent personal experience.

I had a business flight to Chicago recently. For the return flight, the plane was a few minutes late arriving at O’Hare, nothing critical. We were all boarded and buckled in in record time. I was in first class, so I got to see the commotion up front. Minutes later, the pilot announced that there was a hydraulic leak and we would have to deplane while they fixed it, a process taking no longer than 30 minutes.

We all grumbled, but deplaned quickly, happy that we weren’t being held hostage on the plane. Making our way to the NW World Club , we saw a flight attendant telling us to turn around and re-board. I’ve already pre-boarded; now I get to re-board. Next I suppose is e-board.

This is where I was impressed with Northwest. So far this sounds like a very poor flight experience, but they really turned it around for everyone. We were each given three coupons:

1. US$10 or an in-flight drink
2. 1,000 World Perks Bonus Miles (or Air France)
3. $25 off the next flight

Any one of those would have been nice. Getting all three? Outstanding. Thank you, Northwest. Confidence restored.