My life, my job, is built around customer service. The simple fact that if I genuinely care for the concerns you have and let you walk away fully satisfied that the issue was addressed, you will come back and my job will continue to exist. Without customers, the company I work for wouldn’t survive. This is the general idea behind any customer service-based company, and it’s frustrating to experience such a company when they throw their customer service skills out the window and refuse to rectify their mistakes.
My friend Sarah and I are going on a trip to Scotland this year, and we’re extremely excited, as one might imagine. It’s not every day that two twenty-something girls get to travel to Europe on their own time, and on their own dime. So, naturally, when something, or in particular someone, gets in the way of enjoying a wonderful once-in-a-lifetime-experience, we’re going to get pissed off.
The story: On a whim, Sarah looked up our flight information through Yapta.com. Its function is to notify her when the ticket prices go down so that we may get a better deal, since we’ve already purchased our tickets through Expedia.com. When she clicked on our flight information, it took her to a page that told her our flights no longer existed. Confused, she logged onto Expedia to find that there had been a change on the flight itinerary, but there was no explanation as to what those changes entailed. This was on March, 30th, 2011. She had received e-mails from Expedia before for clarification of our flight times and dates, and when she went to check her e-mail about the changed flights, her inbox was empty. So Sarah, being the proactive person she is, called up Expedia and waited for 45 minutes for a woman to tell her that the dates were changed and that they didn’t know why an e-mail hadn’t been sent. She said she was sorry that there had been no notification, but there was nothing she could do about it, and then we had a choice between different dates or cancelling the flights altogether. Sarah picked the later dates and asked that she ensure an e-mail would be sent to her for any future notifications and implied that she wasn’t very happy with their lack of communication. After getting off the phone with her, she called me and we discussed their lapse in customer recovery and professionalism. Not notifying a customer when their flight is cancelled and then telling them they have a choice between different dates or cancelling the trip, and then not buffering the situation in any way is not a way to maintain said customer. Just saying.
So, after our little discussion, she called them back. Sarah doesn’t get incensed. It’s just not in her nature. But, oh boy, after the second conversation with a different Expedia person, she was hell-bent on getting their attention and letting them know that their customer service is not as it should be.
Second part of the story: When she called back she asked if there was something they could do for us since they had changed our entire trip without notifying us, and they said no. She asked if they were sure if there was nothing they could do for us since we’ve had to make other arrangements and switch our schedules, and they offered her a $25 voucher for future hotel bookings through Expedia. Need I say that the offer was laughable? Well, I just did, and it was. At this point, Sarah just comes out with a suggestion, which, in my mind, isn’t all that far-off from what they should have offered to begin with. She asked if they could bump our seats up for the trouble. They said no. He told her that our tickets were purchased too far in advance to tell us of the flight change, which was information they had neglected to tell her the first time she called. Sarah politely asked when they would have notified us. He said they send a trip itinerary three days in advance. (pause for silence….) So, Sarah said, you’re basically telling me that we would have found out three days prior to us departing that our flights had been cancelled and that we would have to change our dates three days before our trip? Riiiiiiight, because that makes perfect sense. Here we are, making our plans and arrangements six months in advance because it’s the responsible thing to do, and we’re getting flack for it? Thanks, Expedia man, thank you very much. Rude.
Now, I was pretty impressed by her calm reaction to the rude employee, because I probably would have given up and hung up unhappy and irritated. She asked to speak to his supervisor. I thought things like that only happened in movies! But here it is, Sarah asking to speak to his supervisor, and they actually put her on the phone. At this point, Sarah decided to ask what exactly was the issue and why the flight got cancelled in the first place. The woman gave her some lame excuse about weather and underselling tickets. Uh, okay. Sarah then asked about the lack of e-mail, and the woman told her that they had just learned that day that the flight had been cancelled, implying that an e-mail was in the process. That mollified Sarah’s edge a little, but she still wanted to know what they could do for us. The woman offered her a $50 voucher for future Expedia hotel bookings. Wow. Just, wow. The question of if they could bump up our seats was repeated, and again Sarah was answered with a big fat ‘no’. Awesome. At this point, Sarah’s basically done and the conversation ends with us thinking they’re the rudest people imaginable, and us still having to change around our trip and arrangements, and having a gaping hole in their story since one person told us one thing, and the supervisor another. So, Sarah decides to call Icelandair.
The story continues: Basically, they are the nicest people ever. There wasn’t anything they could do for us, considering we’d booked through Expedia and not them, which was what we were expecting, but they did happen to mention that the flight wasn’t cancelled on the 30th of March, it was in fact cancelled on the 14th of March, 16 days prior, and plenty of time to send an e-mail to unsuspecting travelers to inform them that their trip had been altered. Hmm…. So, Expedia lied. Not cool, Expedia, not cool.
Moral of the story: What’s the customer supposed to do when they receive awful customer service? My thoughts automatically jump to not going there or using that service any longer. People have bad days, we all do, but I can’t help but think that all three people that were spoken to couldn’t have all been having the same bad day. Is there a line between what’s a reasonable request and an outrageous demand? Yes, absolutely, but I believe that there was nothing unreasonable being asked, and there was definitely no cause for lying. I’m not a fan of liars. Miscommunications happen, but this was an outright lie. Bad form, Expedia, bad form.
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