

How American Airlines is utterly terrible at customer service. - kylebragger
http://kylewritescode.com/post/3573171406/why-american-airlines-is-the-epitome-of-terrible

======
patio11
Tips from a frequent traveller:

1) I consider a $5 tip to the curbside check in guy a form of flight ticket
insurance.

2) Federal regulations mean they owe you when getting involuntarily bumped off
flights, and the amount of actual USD compensation increases with the amount
of time you wait. (This assumes they believe your "I was on time" story.)

3) When dealing with large bureaucracies, document document document.
Conversations held verbally _didn't happen_. Do you have a notebook? If not,
go buy a notebook from the gift shop right now. Get people's names and either
badge or desk number (it's an airport, they all wear them prominently) every
time you talk to them, and write down what they tell you.

4) I can explain at length why your priority is that low on the waitlist
queue, but it boils down to "AA could piss off an entire conference worth of
you and it still wouldn't cost more than losing one high-priority customer
like a twice-weekly business traveller."

------
Duff
In other news, the sky is in fact blue. Of course airline customer service
sucks.

The secret to dealing with any airline exception is not to run for the ticket
counters with the mob -- call the 1-800 number immediately. The folks on the
phone can usually do the same thing as someone at the counter, plus you don't
have to stand in line.

------
jwcacces
Call your credit card company. They at least care if they lose your business.
Have the flight payment refunded back to you and buy a new ticket. Then you
won't be in standby anymore.

------
sorbus
There is no "why" in this article; it is merely about the how.

~~~
kylebragger
Good point; updated.

------
T_S_
I find it interesting how many companies I am in a bad relationship with. We
never break up, it's just loveless or worse. Sometimes, it's simply too
difficult to avoid using some companies. I wouldn't pick American, but I would
pick United, AT&T and every fast food chain that operates on the Jersey
Turnpike. A monopoly is a terrible thing...not to have.

On the other hand, I happily pay healthy margins to Apple and Amex.

~~~
saurik
...and you have to pay those margins, in order to get the kind of customer
service they provide. However, most people actually don't want better customer
service: they want cheaper prices, which leads to competition for lower
margins. If you want better service, you need to convince 99% of people to not
purchase plane tickets from websites that sort by price (which, incidentally,
is also how most people buy telephone service and even the food they eat). I
mean, even hipmunk, with its "sort by agony" feature, still is heavily biased
towards cheaper flights.

~~~
kn0thing
We're working toward an agony sort that has all of those subtleties baked into
it, even weighted depending on how important they are to you. e.g., I'm quite
price insensitive when it comes to wireless + power on my frequent NY<->SF
route -- if you can keep me online and powered up for the whole flight, I'll
pay for it.

Once we can take into consideration, say, subjective reviews of airlines,
routes, etc, things get even more interesting.

Thanks for hipmunking in the meantime, though!

------
shadowflit
Wow. I missed a Delta flight in SF (that while I'll blame the PA system for
anyone who listens, was entirely my own fault), and I ended up first on the
standby list. I always got the impression agents put people who miss their
flights pretty high on the priority list, as opposed to people who just feel
like going standby.

Weird that treatment would be so different across airlines.

~~~
jonkelly
It depends. Airlines distinguish on their waitlists between those who've been
inconvenienced entirely outside their control (aircraft mechanical delay even
weather) vs. those who've missed their flights because they were late. Sounds
like you got lucky and were listed as the former. Sounds like the blog author
was the former but was classified as the latter. Neither mis-classification is
rare from what I've seen as a very frequent traveler.

------
thesethings
Idea: put some kind of link to American Airlines website/customer service in
your website, so they can see your post as source of web traffic? They are
probably "monitoring their brand," but still...

~~~
fosk
Not sure someone will click the link while reading the story

