Wednesday Dec 20 2006 - 1:34am
Northwest Airlines Lies to Their Customers
by Sean
under No Tags
with 20 comments
Everyone hears the horror stories about getting stuck in airports overnight because of weather delays. All of the airlines have a standard policy in this arena: they will pay to put you up in a hotel if the delay was their fault, but if the delay was because of weather, you’re on your own. While I may not like this policy, I understand why they do it and I’m fine with it.
Tonight, I have a darker story to tell. I’m writing to you from a Holiday Inn near Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. I paid for this room with my own money. Thirty other angry customers did the same thing, and it’s Northwest Airlines’ fault. They lied to us.
When I arrived at the Boston airport yesterday afternoon (12/19) to catch Northwest flight 117 to MSP, I was greeted by a friendly yellow “Delayed” notice on departure board. Great, just what I needed. No matter what I do, it seems I always end up getting stuck in either Denver or Minneapolis overnight when trying to fly home to Billings, MT. There aren’t that many flights per day to Billings, so delays always mean staying overnight at a hotel on the airline’s dime. The lost time at home when I just got out of school is a huge pain.
So, since my flight was delayed, I proceeded immediately to the ticket counter to speak with the agent. I wanted to know why the flight was delayed and what I could do about it. If I was going to miss my connecting flight to Billings, I might as well just stay in Boston at school with all of my friends and come back to the airport the next morning. The gate agent Melissa was very friendly and explained that the plane was late coming in from the previous destination. She explained that the new projected arrival time in Minneapolis would make for an extremely tight connection for me, but that I still might be able to make it. I asked her if I missed my connection in Minneapolis, would the airline put me up in a hotel for the night?
Melissa got on the phone and called “ops” to check on the reason the flight was late. She verified that it was Northwest’s fault that the flight was running behind, and assured me that I would be given a hotel room if I failed to make my connection in Minneapolis. She even held a spot on the next morning’s flight for me from Minneapolis to Billings so that I would be sure to have a seat. She also added a note to my itenerary record in the computer stating that I had been guaranteed a free hotel room should I miss the connection. I thanked Melissa for being so friendly and went to grab some food.
Well, the flight was indeed late getting out of Boston. It left a full 30 minutes after the initially announced delayed departure time. At that point, I was pretty sure that I would miss my connection, but I got on the plane anyway because I knew there was a hotel room waiting for me in Minneapolis. I had to get to a concert on Wednesday evening, and I wanted to make sure that I was on that morning flight from Minneapolis to Billings.
When we arrived in Boston (at 10:00pm, 20 minutes after my connecting flight’s departure), the flight attendant came on the intercom and started listing off connections that were still good. It turns out that many of the flight’s passengers had broken connections at this point, but nobody seemed too worried about it. The flight attendant said that a representative would meet us outside with our rebookings.
I walked off the jetway and into a mob of about 30 people waiting for their rebookings and hotel accomodations. I immediately noticed that something was wrong. An airline representative named Tim was just finishing telling everyone that, because this chain of flights had been delayed by de-icing early in the morning in Las Vegas, the airline was not responsible, and we would not be receiving our hotel accomodations. I rolled my eyes, but still wasn’t worried, because I had been promised hotel accomodations and had it noted in my itenerary.
Then, people started speaking up. It turns out that EVERYONE in the group had been promised hotel accomodations, and most had the fact noted in their iteneraries. Some passengers had been offered hotel accomodations in Boston as well, if they preferred to wait there instead until the next morning. All of us had been offered complimentary rebookings in Boston for the next day. We had all chosen to take the chance on coming to Minneapolis because we were told we would have hotel rooms if we didn’t make the connections.
Tim assured us that he couldn’t do anything, but that we should all walk down to the ticketing counter out front and get it sorted out. We asked him to come with us, and he said he would. We waded through the sea of waiting passengers and made our way to the ticketing counter.
When we reached the ticketing counter, it was deserted, except for a few low-ranking employees and, surprise, Tim! We asked Tim why he had told us to come to the ticket counter if there was nobody else to talk to. Then one passenger pointed out that Tim obviously didn’t want all of us making a scene in from of all of the waiting passengers at the gate, so he had coaxed us out beyond the security checkpoint to the deserted ticketing counter. Tim denied this, but it was obvious that this was the case.
Even after we had come out to the ticketing counter, Tim refused to change his tune or back down. He insisted that he was “sorry for the misinformation” but that company policy dictated that he couldn’t give us hotel rooms. He kept coming back to the weather delay and emphasizing that they don’t offer weather vouchers or rebookings of any kind. Finally, I spoke up. (And I never speak up in these situations, but let me tell you, I was pissed. Everyone else shut up. I guess I sounded angry.)
“Look,” I said, “it’s irrelevant now why the plane was delayed at this point. You have thirty angry customers here who were all promised something by an official agent of your airline in Boston. We made our travel decisions today based on that promise. You have a responsibility to honor the agreement that you yourself have verified by looking at our iteneraries. You can discuss this with the agent that gave the misinformation later, but at this point you have to honor the promise that was made to us.”
He flat out refused that this made sense, and went right back to talking about the weather conditions and “AOP”s, which he refused to define. It was obvious that he was just trying to confuse us at this point.
Finally, Tim offered a $50 or 5000 mile voucher for Northwest tickets and a $5 food voucher. Pissed off and tired, the thirty passengers agreed, and slunk off to lick their wounds. So I’m sitting here in the Holiday Inn on my own dime because Northwest Airlines lied to me. Not just me, but thirty other passengers.
Northwest obviously doesn’t empower their employees to make their customers happy. But it’s not isolated to this airline. Similar situations have played themselves out just for my family in the past three months. Nationwide it must be practically an epidemic. It all comes down to this: airlines are running their businesses with their eyes stuck on short-term cost-saving and penny-pinching. So they implement policies that allow them to weasel out of any responsibility for passengers beyond what is strictly required. However, if the airlines would just take a more long-term view of actually empowering their employees to make their customers happy by rectifying straightforward situations such as this one, everyone would love them.
As it is, airline executives sit in their board rooms thinking that it’s terrorism that makes everyone hate to fly. No stupids. Your crappy customer service almost qualifies as terrorism all by itself. I want to hit them all over the head with the Cluetrain Manifesto until they see how simple this problem is to solve. But the existing airlines have entrenched themselves so thoroughly through lobbying and subsidization that nothing is likely to change anytime soon.
In the meantime, I plan to launch a holy war on their customer service department until I’m granted either (a) a reimbursement for my hotel costs or (b) a voucher for a free ticket. Other than that, all I can do is fear the threat of corporate terrorism and dread the next time that I have to fly somewhere.
1
(Post Author)
Oh yeah, I forgot the best part. They gave all of the pissed-off passengers a free travel-bag for the hotel stay (since they really didn’t want to get our luggage for us, assuring us that it would take “hours” to retrieve.) Guess what was in the travel-bag? A T-SHIRT!!! Oh man, there’s nothing I want more than to wear a Northwest t-shirt right now. Way to twist the knife, guys!
2
Well, that sucks! Delays anywhere are bad enough, but sheesh! Having to pay for it yourself because some major-capitalist airline company wants to squirm out of a situation which would have about as much of an effect on their bank balance as, well, a raindrop in the ocean, is just taking the piss.
Regarding your complaint/ war/ revolution en-masse, make sure you do go through with it! There’s far too many people who think they don’t stand a chance going against such large companies but if you make a big enough stink out of it they’ll have to listen.
Good luck!
3
(aβ Member)
One quick thing - I think you meant when you arrived in Minneapolis at 10pm, not Boston. Other than that, go forth and conquer. Maybe we can drum up some publicity for this nonsense like the morons at Verizon who can’t do simple arithmetic.
4
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5
(aβ Member)
The one bad thing about trying to do something against Northwest is that even though they are constantly plagued by problems like strikes and bankruptcy (they must have a good business model!) they own the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. Almost literally. Other airlines have to rent their gates from Northwest. I guess I’m lucky because Minneapolis is my destination, so flying Northwest always gets me home in one stop.
Speaking of that, you might’ve been able to sleep at my house if I could’ve arranged for a family member to go pick you up (I live like 20 minutes from the airport). As it is, I think that Holiday Inn you’re in is one where I had a group information session for NYU back in high school. You could go visit the Mall of America if you get bored (you could probably walk there from the hotel actually). Not that anything happens there at night anymore. Place is dead.
While I’m getting more and more random, you might as well know that Dean and I used your card for some Chinese food tonight. He got an entire fish! It’s like 2 feet long (and now half-devoured). Biggest thing I’ve ever seen delivered as food to the dorms. Crazy.
6
dude, that sucks.
As with Brendan, if you’d wanted, my family could have picked you up and you could have stayed with them over in st. paul last night. never forget the olin connection man
that said, nwa sucks. I’ve come to expect that my flight from Boston will be ~3 hours late whenever i fly them - in fact, it’s the rare occurrence that everything is on time that surprises me.
it’s unfortunate that you were unable to escalate your complaints w/ nwa - MSP isn’t like a small airport - there should have been tons of other more senior employees to call in and bitch at. I have heard of people in the past have success going back outside of security and talking to the check-in agents.
Either way, you deserve compensation. Write a nasty angry letter to the hq office with documentation, and within 6 weeks i’m sure you’ll get some sort of reply/vouchers.
enjoy the break!
7
NWA is half-based out of the MSP airport. There’s no way that there wasn’t a superior that Tim could have gotten. Their behavior is atrocious — luring you out of the security area like that.
Good luck with your reimbursement efforts.
8
Get a print out of the itinerary where it states you were promised a room, mail the copy with a letter to the CEO of NW Airlines and in the letter tell him if his company does not (a) reimburse your expense for booking a hotel room or (b) grant a free ticket you will take NW Airlines to court and the next correspondence will be from your lawyer. Make sure to date the letter, and grant a 30 day notice to the CEO, in which time he has to meet your request.
My grandfather taught me this lesson years ago and you’d be surprised how effective it is.
9
I was recently lied to as well by a different airline. Like yourself, our fight was delayed. No big deal this time of year. Hours pass and we are told we will have to go to a different gate and take a different flight to our destination. Earlier we were told that we were waiting for the pilot. I casually asked what happened and I was told he got on the wrong plane and flew to Phoenix instead of Las Vegas. I did not press it, but I was thinking, “how could a pilot of a major airline ever make a mistake that big and do I really want him flying the plane I’m on?” It was obvious that our flight was under booked and canceled to save money.
10
JetBlue on the other hand is wonderful to deal with in my experience. Due to a mix-up between my parents as to how I was getting home for Christmas, I was accidentally booked on a flight home today instead of tomorrow and didn’t find out about it until after the plane had taken off. When I called and explained what had happened, the customer service people at JetBlue found me another flight for tomorrow at no additional charge.
Maybe more airlines should employ housewives in Utah for customer service?
11
This is unacceptable! And it happened to me too, just a month ago flying home from Boston on United Airlines. Almost the same kind of scenario. We were delayed by two hours because of a connecting plane having “mechanical problems” which later was changed to “weather issues”. In Boston and on the plane we were assured that we all would be given hotel vouchers if we did not make our connections. But in Denver, it was a different story. There were no customer service people behind the counters (I’m sure they were all hiding). We had to go to a bank of phones with a bunch of other passengers, wait in line, and then be told on the phone by a faceless monotone employee that we were already rebooked for the next day but we would not receive a hotel voucher. My husband marched us around the airport to find a live United agent to talk to and demanded that they give us a hotel voucher (we were already really angry about getting home a day late and being lied to). They shrugged their shoulders and said “not policy”. We then demanded and waited at the counter in front of their faces until they could “find” a manager and we were told the same story. Finally she printed us out a voucher for the worst hotel we’ve ever stayed in (truly) on the OTHER side of Denver. We then couldn’t find a shuttle that was willing to take us there…..need I go on? The entire episode was a nightmare and we felt like refugees, but this seems to be the new protocol for the airlines. “Customer service” is a joke. If we had other options - we wouldnt’ be using United or Northwest anymore. Jet Blue is right in knowing how to treat and keep their customers. Unfortunately, they don’t fly everywhere. United and Northwest management should be hung in the town square for how they treat paying customers.
12
Sean,
You are awesome! Thanks for the laugh, and I feel your pain. I hate flying this time of year, and its always a crap shoot as to whether or not I will actually get home. Matt and I leave on Sunday because he has to work and with the whole denver mess we might just be spending Christmas in Portland. We have to go throught Portland to get to Billings. I don’t get it, but whatever! Anyway, I can’t wait to see you and hang out. Oh and skiing will be awesome. Hope you make it home safe. Love you!!
Kate
13
Keep making noise and write that letter…It’s the squeakie wheel that gets the attention.. and if a letter to the CEO dosn’t work try contacting the news media they always love a good “human interest” story… My brother had issues with a government agencie in Oregon DEQ for car emissons test and he got a news story out of it… Keep Squeaking you’ll get some response!!
Take care and Merry Christmas!!
14
Never take what they give you. You can take them to small claims court at the end and usually win. A fifty dollar voucher that you have to use on NWA is not really worth that much is it. This applies to all things of this nature including denied boarding due to over booking. Make sure to save as much documentation as you can and get print outs of any notes made on your itinerary. A promise, in word only, means nothing to these money hungry robber barons that run the airlines.
15
NWA is not the airline that seems to be gregariously sucking these days. Let me share a horror-story of customer service I experienced with United Airlines. My boyfriend had booked a round trip flight from Toronto to San Francisco with a connecting flight in Vegas. Our trip was also booked online. On our way back from SF to LV, we arrived at the SF airport and were directed to stand in line for 30mins to check ourselves in with the automated check-in machines, however it wouldn’t process our flight for some reason and once we notified the airline representatives they told us to call customer service because they can’t manually check in tickets that were purchased online :S go figure. Anyways so we called customer service who informed us that the machines were having problems and that we couldn’t auto-check in, and to proceed to the airline counter and explain the problem and we would be manually checked (45 mins has pased so far). So we drag ourselves back to the front counter, and I tell the rep (the same person who made me stand in the auto-check in line, and then told me he couldn’t do anything to call customer service) that I was told we could only be manually checked since machines had a problem. Do you know what he said? “If you want me check you in get in the back of the line!” I made this United Airlines dufus realize that we had already been standing in line, and it was their machines that weren’t working, also that we would miss our flight if we had to wait another 30 - 45 mins. He’s response? “That’s not my problem, get to the back of the line like everybody elese”. I asked to speak to a higher authority, there was none, nobody would come and speak with us, I made several calls back to customer service who also couldn’t get in touch with a superivisor on duty. As a last resort we missed our flight and to catch our flight in vegas to toronto, we had to travel all the way from SF airport to Oakland airport, and pay for a brand new ticket to Vegas with SouthWest Airlines. I will never fly with United ever again, and I’ve made it a priority to tell everyone will about THE most horrible customer service EVER. Thanks for listening.
16
thanks Sean for the laugh. Glad to know I’m not the only one with a grouch about NWA. — found your blog when I googled “I HATE NORTHWEST AIRLINES”. bastards. oh sure, they give you an free ticket for sitting on sticky stinky seats for an extra 5 hours — but do you think you can use that ticket? Heck no! So, basically I’m waiting to find out if NWA has ANY “W” economy flights anywhere close to where I live (the only flights that the free ticket can be used). Unlike you, I didn’t move from BFE, I still live here and the airport is primarily serviced by NWA. I could take United, but it takes me West, not East. I think everyone who flies through MSP on a regular basis should pool their money and start another major airline — put NWA out of business. anyone with that poor of customer service should be out of work.
17
Get a clue and quit flying. Airlines won’t change anytime soon so just drive everywhere like I do.
18
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