Ntboy7756, glad your letter worked. I think there's some definite magic to writing complaint letters. They get hundreds of emails and phone calls every day. A letter stands out. Here's a letter that my boss Bruce once wrote.
Not overly lengthy, but it worked as well. It went to JetBlue and was quite humorous. And it worked.
Mr. David Neeleman
Founder and CEO
JetBlue Airways
A HEAVY Disappointment Report
Dear Mr. Neeleman:
I suspect that I’m like a lot of your customers: I had heard all sorts of good things about JetBlue, and had it in my head to “give it a try one of these days.”
My opportunity finally came last week when I found myself needing to make a quick trip to New York. I checked fares on AA, DL and UA, didn’t like what I saw, then checked your fares and schedule from Long Beach, liked what I saw, and booked the trip. (16 Oct; Flight 22; Long Beach/JFK.)
And when I got on the plane, I thought I’d really like it. Big bins. Nice leather seats. Televisions. I was even in an exit row, with extra leg room…
Then my seatmate arrived.
He was easily 400 pounds.
In fact, he was so big that he couldn’t fit into his aisle seat at all unless the arm rest stayed up. Which meant that in addition to his own seat, he took up a significant portion of my middle seat… with me in it! He took up so much space that I couldn’t use my tray table. Believe it or not, to change TV channels, I had to ask the people in the row behind me to push the buttons on the upright arm rest!
It was sort of like a scene from an old Marx Brothers movie: the very very huge man in the aisle seat… me, squished in the middle… the guy by the window who knew there was no way he was going to be able to go to the bathroom until we got to JFK… the nice lady in row 13 serving as human TV remote control.
But it wasn’t funny; it was painful. The big guy was just too big for one seat.
I felt cheated. I paid for a seat, but only got to sit in half of it. For more than five hours.
I know that it’s very difficult to accommodate situations like this one, particularly on a full flight. I think that at least a few airlines are either denying seating to “extra large” people if they can’t find an empty seat for them to sit next to, or making them buy two seats; I don’t know if JetBlue has a policy on this issue.
But as an airline that clearly wants to differentiate itself by providing a perceptively better comfort experience, you need a policy. It’s fundamentally unfair to squish your passengers. (That’s Southwest’s job!)
I do believe that some sort of compensation for my pain would be appropriate.
Mark
www.complainforfunandprofit.com