Yup…Frankfort is where they lost my bag heading home from Europe. Although they lost it at JFK heading out so I think they all suck.
Wow. I just wanted a quick cathartic rant, and then to watch the thread sink like a stone like most of my others. Seem to have hit a raw nerve here 
For the reccord, I did not yell at anyone, and never would. I like to think the things I could say but know it gets me nowhere. I have emailed Monty Brewer (President and CEO), and Duncan Dee (VP customer experience) at AC to express my displeasure. They’re being paid to listen to my bitching. The last time I had to do this (2 hour delay at Boston and no info), I miraculously got satisfaction within 24 hours. I’m just lucky I have access to their email addresses (and no, I’m not giving them out so don’t ask).
FTR, I’m enjoying this thread immensely.
MC
I never said I didn’t understand it; I said I consider it unacceptable. IMO, if you scream at, swear at, or are otherwise abusive to service personnel who neither caused your problem nor can fix it, you are a dick. Pretty much the definition of one. You may want to look beyond that to “I was a dick because . . .” but that doesn’t change the fact you you were. They lose your bag; you calll the rep an asshole. Their bad behavior may explain yours in your opinion, but it doesn’t excuse it in mine.
And again, aside from the issue of mere politesse, my POV is informed by what I personally expect and would tolerate. To me, being sworn at or screamed at would result in an immediate cessation of the conversation: We’re done talking, period, and I’m walking away. I fail to see how you could possibly get better results by screaming or swearing at the air than you could by talking minimally politely to a real person.
And it’s not like I’m not the voice of marginal experience here: I worked as a car rental agent for several years in college, in an area with a high tourist level in the summer (Northwest Montana, 90 miles from Glacier Park). We had a small fleet of vehicles because for the other nine months of the year, there wasn’t much call for them. People would commonly come up to the counter in the summer as walk-ups (no reservation) and get really pissed if we didn’t have a car for them. These people didn’t have a legitimate complaint. But people also sometimes – rarely, but sometimes – would come up with a reservation and we still didn’t have a car for them, due to erroneous over-booking from central reservations, or cars breaking down, or earlier customers not bringing our cars back when they said they would. Those people with reservations obviously did have a very just complaint. I would do everything I could to try to help them but the fact that my agency had either screwed something up or the fates had screwed something up was NOT MY PERSONAL FAULT. And I had no obligation to be screamed at or sworn at because the customer was angry, frustrated, tired, or in any other undesirable emotional state. I didn’t put up with it then, and I wouldn’t put up with it now, and I have no expectation that anyone else would, either.
Bringing up screaming? Strawman.
Talking about drunken assholes pitching a bitch at a fast food counter? Strawman.
People yelling and swearing at everyone in the vicinity? Strawman.
People complaining about luggage coming in on the next flight? Strawman.
I believe the topic was crappy service concerning legitimate complaints and an inability to gain access to people that can actually do something(sometimes due to written company policy).
I guess I have been very lucky indeed; it has been my experience that Air Canada employees have been nice, polite, and even gone out of their way to be helpful, although I never had lost bags or anything super-serious happen. Their United Airlines counterparts, however, tend to be the rude, sarcastic and nasty ones. I hate flying on UA planes (though the AC/UA co-flights with AC equipment is fine, especially since most have the new entertainment systems). But then again, I love flying, and I actually don’t think long flights are that much of a PITA. Perhaps I’m the crazy one!
The thing with WestJet, though, is that I don’t actually feel that they are very competitive, at least not yet. I understand that they have more routes out west than east, with everything passing through Toronto/Hamilton, but when I’ve had to book flights (usually to PEI, admittedly not the busiest airport in the country!), they either don’t even have them on the days I want (sometimes not even on a Saturday!), or have a single flight at some ungodly hour. One time the only available route was from Montreal to Toronto to Halifax to Charlottetown, for more than twice was AC was charging for a direct flight. It’s insane. On top of that, I have never, ever seen WestJet to have a cheaper fare. The closest I’ve come was to have WJ and AC offer the “same” price, though when it came down to it, AC was still a couple of pennies cheaper, usually a couple of $. So we just book AC to get the Aeroplan points and because they usually have at least 3-4 flights to Charlottetown (some direct, some through Halifax) every day, often more. I’d love to try WJ if they ever actually decide to book routes to where I want to go, when I want to go, and to actually charge less (though it’s not a matter of pennies that will define that, of course!)
In the top 30 largest US hubs, 511,136,492 passengers boarded planes in 2006, according to the FAA (http://www.faa.gov/airports_airtraffic/airports/planning_capacity/passenger_allcargo_stats/passenger/media/cy06_primary_np_comm.pdf ). I don’t really have a point with that, but I do find it kind of incredible!
I believe the topic is also about the propriety of calling someone an “asshole” if they cannot help or will not help you. And I further believe that I said “screamed OR sworn at” repeatedly. So having identified what are IYO the strawmen, maybe you’d like to address the part that isn’t? What exactly is your opinion on the propriety of calling service workers assholes? Or are you just interested in strawmen identification?
Sure beats talking about car rental places that have few legitimate complaints and wonderful customer service, which has fuckall to do with the subject at hand.
Yeah, you do say “screamed or sworn at” repeatedly. Is there some reason you keep trying to introduce the word “scream” into the conversation?
As for the propriety of calling someone an “asshole” if they cannot or will not help you-If they cannot help you, they damn well better know who can. If they will not help you, well…they are assholes.
It is related to the subject at hand. It is a situation analogous to the one in which Uzi called the guy an asshole: A legitimate complaint that nevertheless cannot be fixed by the person you’re taking your frustration out on. It also is an explanation of why I personally hold the POV I do: I have been on the other side of the counter, being addressed rudely or abusively, and I didn’t appreciate it. I hardly think it’s relevance should need such specific explanation, but there it is for you.
Because it’s bad behavior, just as swearing at someone is. It’s abusive. Apparently you’d like to keep the thread conversation so narrow that we all are limited to talking about one type of abusive customer service behavior and not another – all other examples being IYO “strawmen” – but you are not the Thread Police in this regard, dictating to me or to anyone else what we can or cannot talk about. I also honestly have no idea why you’re being so fucking snarky to me in particular or why you’re choosing to bitch about what I post or how I post it instead of the point I’m trying to make.
There are a lot of people in this world who we may think are being assholes. For me, a good example leaps to mind. That doesn’t make us any better if we start calling them names. And it’s hardly going to change my opinion that swearing at service people who (a) cannot help you and (b) cannot respond in kind is unacceptable, counterproductive, and IMO shabby for reason of (a) and (b).
And since when are postings in the Pit required to be limited to a narrow point of discussion related to the OP? Just off the top of my head, look at the thread about Eight Belles, which among other things has had people talking about how wrong it is for animals to be used for human entertainment, how horse owners are responsible for seeing that their pastures are kept hole-free, and other topics even less related to the OP without anyone throwing out accusations of strawmen.
If someone is complaining about a pattern of bad service, and talks about how s/he bitched about it to the only people available, talking about drunken customers at a fast food joint, or screaming customers, or people without legitimate complaints, or good service at another business are diversions. They do not address the OP, and makes the conversation look like this:
Person A-“Fucking airport shipped my luggage to another state, and didn’t let me know where it was for a week, so I got angry at the personnel who were supposed to help me when it seemed as if they didn’t give a fuck!”
Person B-“I think fast food personnel who are doing their best shouldn’t have to put up with drunks who yell at everybody.”
This tangent started when I called out Mahna Mahna for his
attitude with the clerk. Sounds to me he was bitching about bad service, and being a “screaming customer” while doing so. I maintain that anyone who treats a front line employee the way Mahna Mahna did is an asshole, and needs to be shown the door.
I agree 100%
But I don’t want to catch flies – I just want to catch a flight and get off it with my luggage, or have my grandmother flown to the same country that she had booked passage for.
If I wanted to catch flies, I would fly on a certain local airline in my area (last weekend my neighbour was complaining to me that on a couple of occasions he has caught fleas from this particular airline – I enjoy flying it, for you get to be your own flight attendant, and the pilot will detour for you to look at places along the way – but given some of the passengers I have come upon, I know his complaint is justified. Come to think of it, this is the sme airline that had a delay because we were shot at. To give AC their due, I have never had a delay due to small arms ground fire, and I have never seen any flies on an AC flight).
When travelling I do expect that problems will arise; what is telling to me is how the airline and its representatives respond. The general tenor of my experiences with Air Canada is that, on the whole, they would be happier with airplanes that were devoid of passengers because the passengers are getting in their way. This isn’t universally true, of course, but I’ve experienced enough of it that gven a choice I prefer to fly WestJet. My experiences have been far superior with WestJet for their overall customer service.
A recent anecdote of a friend’s business trip to Toronto: she was flying out on a Sunday evening to Toronto for a Monday meeting with a return trip home scheduled for Tuesday. She checked her bag so that she could carry on her laptop. Her flight was nonstop from Regina to Toronto. The flight arrives in Toronto and the passengers disembark. They proceed to the baggage area. The passengers wait for their luggage to arrive. And wait some more. It is getting later into the night. Still no luggage. After more than an hour of waiting, someone finally shows up to tell them that there was no luggage, and they couldn’t tell them where it was. It gives one pause to think of a plane load of luggage going missing on a nonstop flight, but there you have it. She finally got her luggage back on Wednesday, after she returned home.
So beyond the mystifying fact of what did they do with the whole load of luggage for three days, to me the really perturbing fact is that they let their customers stand around for more than an hour waiting for luggage that was not going to show. That is poor customer service. The airline: Air Canada, of course.
I’ve already refuted saying anything of the kind. Please do not attribute things to me that I have never said and have specifically denied.
In the situations you mentioned, most are no harm no foul. You didn’t have a car of the variety they booked, so you give them something better. Big deal. If they didn’t want the replacement car, or if you had no cars, you returned their deposit and the customer can go on his way thinking your company is incompetent and never have to deal with you again. You lose my bag, though, and it is like a bad divorce. I have no option but to continue to deal with you until you give me back my property that was entrusted to you. And if the response from the clerk is, “If you read the small print, you’d realize that we never promised we’d ever deliver your bags, Mwahahaha!!”, what do you think the reaction of the customer will be? To expect a similar reaction to we’ve overbooked a car or given a person a cheeseburger when they expected a hamburger is totally ludicrous.