[AirlineComplaints.org]

Originally Posted by abutterfinger25

I agree 100% to the concept and ideas behind this, and other similar sites.

We appreciate your support, honesty, and forthrightness.

But the cynic in me does not see the carriers voluntarily co-operating and addressing complaints in a forum driven public enviroment.

Lets just take Graham's complaint as an example: He indicates that American is sending him vouchers for the problem. Lets just say that the vouchers = $200 Now say another traveler, Pete, had the exact same problem and the carrier sends Pete $300 in vouchers. Now American has another complaint because Graham sees that Pete got an extra $100 and wants the same compensation. For this reason alone, carriers will always contract the passenger privately in an attempt to resolve an issue.

Great example. If all of these forms of compensation are held to public scrutiny, then it will force airlines to standardize their compensation rather than compensate people based on how well they write their letter, who they send it to, who they know at the airline, how frequent they fly with that airline, etc. This is what we mean when we say "transparency benefits everyone". Once an airline standardizes their compensation, their competitors will follow suit and the invisible hand of the free market will ensure that the compensations remain relevant, fair, and proportional across-the-board.

As for carriers taking proactive rsponse and responding to complaints posted in this and similar forums, that is just not going to happen. Again, take Graham's complaint. While I have no reason to doubt its content, or any other complaint on this site, there is no way for American to verify it. There is no flight date, flight number, or even the passenger's real name.

This is why we ask our members to post their flight number and details. Several of our members follow through with this. Regardless, our members know that the airlines aren't yet directly replying to complaints here, so many forgo personally identifying themselves. We are certain this will change once the Airlines join us in an official capacity.

Now the carrier could proactively contact Graham with a personal message through the site, but why would they? Graham already stated that they did not contact him when he contacted them directly so why would they extra steps to contact him through a third party site?

That's exactly it. Airlines can afford to ignore Customers privately - since no one other than the customer ever really finds out - but we don't believe they can afford to ignore a public Complaint since everyone - current and potential customers alike - will be made aware that the airline is ignoring one of its own customers.

Sure you can say "public image" but if you watch the industry closely, you will see that they really don't see how these complaints hurt their overall public image.

That might be true now when only 700 Complaints have been filed here with only 85,000 people seeing them, but we believe that will change considerably once we have over a million visitors and over 10,000 Complaints. At the end of the day, consumers have a choice when choosing who to travel with, and the airlines know this.

Especially when "Paul" has the exact same complaint against United and "Stacy" has the same complaint against Delta, ect.

We can assure you that each airline does not receive the same number of complaints - particularly in each area - and do not handle them the same ways. The lack of transparency so far makes it difficult to really compare with any amount of depth the differences in the complaints. Statistics, for example, might tell us that Southwest receives the least number of complaints per 100,000 passengers, but don't give us any more details about the actual complaints - or their severity and/or lack of compensation - so it's only scratching the surface.

As long as they see their image as better than the competitions, they would rather focus on other things.

Precisely. Once there is full transparency in this industry regarding the number of complaints made to each airline, how the complaints are handled, and how much compensation is offered for each scenario, Airlines will know exactly where they stand amongst their peers and those under-performing will be forced to improve if they wish to remain competitive and survive.

As for the response Graham recieved from American, we recieved one complaint this month from a "Graham" against American Airlines. On 7/18, an anlayst encouraged American to respond to the the consumer. Draw your own conclussions.

This is specifically why we encourage members to also file a complaint with the DOT. Also, complaining to the DOT doesn't always resolve complaints to a customers satisfaction, so if complaining directly to the airlines or even the government agencies responsible for regulating the industry is not enough to get the airlines to act in a fair manner, then the only option left is for the public to be made aware so that they can make more informed decision when selecting their travel in the future. Furthermore, the public pressure - if great enough - can often times force an airline to act responsibly, something we've seen throughout corporate history many times.

In my opinion, if you want a response from the carrier and attempted to contact the carrier are falling by the wayside: file a complaint with the DOT here: http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/escomplaint/es.cfm

Again, we agree - and encourage - our members to do so, but as many of our members have already experienced, that is often times not enough to reach a satisfactory conclusion with the airlines.

I hope that I am wrong and you are right because then I would not have to spend as much time on general complaint issue and would have more time to spend on regulatory matters.

That's yet another benefit of AirlineComplaints.org, it allows people like you to focus more time and energy on Regulatory matters rather than dealing with duplicate complaints.

...

Originally Posted by Graham NZ

I thank you both for your efforts on my and other disgruntaled customers behalf.

You're welcomed.