Apologies and Thanks
Chris,
Sorry to hear about your situation with the airline.
I do not work for an airline. Just a frequent passenger.
Here's the letter that I sent. I did explain to the agent that I did not hold her responsible for policies that can easily be perceived as stupid. In fact, I asked her for the address to send a letter to Continental management - and she was happy to assist.
Message: To: Larry Kellner
Chairman & CEO, Continental Airlines, Inc.
Dear Mr. Kellner:
This past weekend I volunteered to book travel for a small high school physics club team going from Seattle to Atlanta for a robotics tournament. Aside from some confusion about how a group of 8 unrelated people could be booked together on the same itinerary, the process worked fairly well. The initial group of students and two chaperones (me as a placeholder however), were confirmed and each called in to have their tickets paid.
Today, (Monday) a chaperone change was needed so I called Continental to have the chaperones' names changed. I was sternly reminded that the ticket is non-transferable and that there was nothing that a customer service agent can do other than sell me another ticket for the new chaperone, and the displaced chaperone (me in this case) would have to use their ticket within one-year or it would expire. She tried to convince me that "the airline would lose money" if she changed the name on the ticket. I told her that the policy that she just recited (non-transferable, non-refundable) is not even written on the receipt provided from the Continental website. But I was curtly reminded that the customer service agent who sold me the ticket surely advised me of that policy on the phone. Whatever…
I told her that I thought that this policy is not fair to customers – particularly a volunteer like me who is trying to organize travel for an educational group. We stand to lose $362 for because of this inflexible policy – a big chunk of the team's budget. She had a hard time disagreeing because, if she was in my position, she would also be in a situation where she stood to lose money while volunteering to help her child's school. Is it any wonder that finding parents willing to volunteer for school activities is so difficult?
It seems to me that such customer-unfriendly policies are far more likely to lose money for an airline than a policy which seems to have no good business purpose other than to try to wrest more money from a small non-profit group of students trying to travel to a tournament.
The other chapperone will travel on a different airline and meet us in Atlanta. No thanks to Continental.
Sincerely,
KJC
|