[tomw]

Lufthansa has NO customer service. This is not a judgment, it is a fact.

They have customers and they have procedures. This works when things go as planned. But when things do not go as planned, companies rely upon customer service. Lufthansa does not. They do ont rely upon customer service because in the face of crisis or a breakdown in the system they do not deviate from their normal operating procedures. For this reason Lufthansa has designed a system to keep customers out of the way. They have built an impenetrable wall to keep customers out.

Lufthansa has no phone contact for customer service. NONE, NADA, NICHT, The only way to communicate with Lufthansa when things go wrong is by fax - and they charge you for that. The card we received says the charge to fax Lufthansa is 0,12 Euros per minute. This may seem odd, but it is only odd if you are concerned about customer service. And Lufthansa is not.

They really do not have customer service.

Customer service fills the void between customers and procedures. Lufthansa is in denial. For them: things go right and they follow normal operating procedures: or things go wrong, and they follow normal operating procedures. Nothing changes. That is why they don't need customer service. In their world customers merely get in the way of normal operating procedures. And when things go wrong Lufthansa's answer is to bear down and focus more on normal operating procedures. The need for this intensified focus is only distracted by customers, so they designed a system to keep customers out of their way. Hence, the Lufthansa impenetrable wall of no communication, no service and no concern - that is their business model.

After my last canceled flight where my family and I were stranded in Munich. Not delayed, abandoned. Left to fend for ourselves, to get to our final destination (Stuttgart) after our international flight into Munich. For 18 months I faxed and wrote letters, including international letters directly to the CEO of Lufthansa. After 32 letters and 16 faxes I gave up. Never got a response from anyone. Not one. Not a call. Not a letter. Not a fax. Not an email. Six of the letters were to executives in Koln.

Lufthansa simply does not care. They have not only have a total disregard for passengers, they have disdain.

Avoid Lufthansa - it is the mantra of the sane. Pass the word...

[jimworcs]

Wow, that is really shocking... you should consider going to the media. For a corporation to ignore that many letters is astonishing. You may also wish to know that if Lufthansa breached your rights under EU 261, which it sounds like they did, there is a law firm based in the Netherlands who will sue them on your behalf on a no-win, no fee basis.

[ChrisR]

Originally Posted by tomw

Lufthansa has NO customer service. This is not a judgment, it is a fact.

They have customers and they have procedures. This works when things go as planned. But when things do not go as planned, companies rely upon customer service. Lufthansa does not. They do ont rely upon customer service because in the face of crisis or a breakdown in the system they do not deviate from their normal operating procedures. For this reason Lufthansa has designed a system to keep customers out of the way. They have built an impenetrable wall to keep customers out.
.....
Customer service fills the void between customers and procedures. Lufthansa is in denial. For them: things go right and they follow normal operating procedures: or things go wrong, and they follow normal operating procedures. Nothing changes. That is why they don't need customer service. In their world customers merely get in the way of normal operating procedures. And when things go wrong Lufthansa's answer is to bear down and focus more on normal operating procedures. The need for this intensified focus is only distracted by customers, so they designed a system to keep customers out of their way. Hence, the Lufthansa impenetrable wall of no communication, no service and no concern - that is their business model.
...

a) I would like to second the sentiments expressed above. I have just returned after 2 days stranded in FRA and thought that are a number of things I am grateful for (hotels, taxis, meal vouchers and English speaking agents) there are serious structural flaws with the Lufthansa's approach to doing business that destroy customer satisfaction, risk passenger safety and unnecessarily add costs to all of us.

Tomw captures it very well when he says "in the face of crisis or a breakdown in the system they do not deviate from their normal operating procedures….They have built an impenetrable wall to keep customers out ...For them: things go right and they follow normal operating procedures: or things go wrong, and they follow normal operating procedures. Nothing changes. "

In a serious emergency they may put a few extra agents on but they do not rise to handle the emergency:
i) My flight landed on Tue 21 Dec 2010 in FRA but onward flight was cancelled. 5 hours of waiting in a line got me to an agent who re-booked me on a LH flight the next day as a standby passenger. The correct thing would have been to staff with more people, handle customers faster (print taxi vouchers not hand write them!), and better procedures (I should have been put on another airline with a confirmed seat). Agent issued 2 hotel vouchers and 1 taxi voucher - personally piad for 1 taxi ride
ii) The second day was wasted waiting as standby on two flights to EWR where the chance of success was minuscule - 50 waitlists - 4 accepted. The planes were already at capacity at Christmas. Good idea to waitlist missed flights under normal circumstances - but when you have 2+ days of missed flights there are too many passengers to fit on subsequent flights!
iii) Sent to another line the customer service counter at 5:15 pm in Terminal A near gate 58 on 22 Dec 2010 - after 15 mins we were informed that there shift was over and that we would have to go stand in another line for 4+ hours (after being on standby for 8 hours). Complaints that closing a customer service counter at normal hours did not make sense under the circumstances were met with incredulity. Quitting time was quitting time - 2-6 days of cancelled flights and thousands of stranded passenger notwithstanding. The lady's humanity was a bit weak and/or some serious customer service training is needed
iv) Went to the mezzanine level of Terminal B on 22 Dec for re-ticketing and waited 4 hours - 5:30 to 10:30 pm for them to clear about 120 people. LH had about 10 agents but their efficiency seems to be too low (the agents are courteous but too slow and hindered by weak systems). Again manual issue of Hotel and taxi vouchers. This time booked on Singapore Airline with a seat assignment (FRA-EWR) - system can assign a seat but not issue a boarding pass so have to make do with 4 hours sleep to come early. If booking on another airline had been done a day earlier - one day could have been saved. My seatmate on 23 Dec had booked the day before and got on - capacity was available on other airlines to clear out FRA!! 3 agents were controlling hundreds of passengers while the 10 agents process them. 2 of them could have been converted to agents to process passengers
v) Overall, big emergencies need to be handled by senior managers and with special procedures. More aggressive backlog clearing (buy off German passengers and send them home). 2+ days in hotels+meals+taxis is more expensive than paying compensation and sending as many people home as possible). No one was thinking out to the box and focusing on the customer pain.
vi) On arrival in JFK instead of EWR on Singapore Airlines my suitcase did not arrive. With 3 hours notice why could LH not pull my suitcase and get it on a Singapore Airlines flight?

Other miscellaneous comments worth mentioning:
i) I am an engineer and travel in Sweden and Canada extensively - I was not convinced that there was lot of snow or that the near freezing conditions could not have been handled better with significantly less cost and customer dissatisfaction with better snow removal and de-icing equipment. Perhaps someone could comments on FRA equipment vs Montreal (YUL)
ii) There were many people who were not allowed to go to hotels in Germany - they had to sleep in the airport for 2+ days. I tried to help and spoke to German Immigration - they had the Lufthansa sense of customer service - normal rules needed to be followed even in the middle of a snow emergency when they made no sense. I was trying to help a 62 year old Ethiopian couple, who had never left their country before and had a visa for the US. Why would they flee in Germany in the middle of a snow storm when they could go to Florida and do it there? Perhaps German Immigration had good reasons. If so, then these passengers who were really stranded in the airport should have been cleared first.
iii) There should be out reach to the weakest. The Ethiopian man was diabetic but being new to Germany did not know how to distinguish the bread from the almond pastries offered. He ate nothing. He did not speak English that well had a great file of his travel documents - he was routed to EWR instead of Orlando - waitlist. I believe that people who did not speak English and did not accustomed to asking for service suffered the most. No telephone vouchers were available for him to phone his son. Without my help the Ethiopian couple could have stayed in FRA for days - I wonder if someday someone will die of neglect. Folks without hotels should be cleared, along with the young children, first. Not business travellers first. Not in an emergency.
iv) There was some information floating around that it had been 20 years since a snow storm of this magnitude. However, a LH agent said that 10 months earlier things had been worse during the volcano. LH had not learned to handle emergencies in spite of recent failures in their disaster preparedness. I believe there were other similar circumstances - large scale passenger stranding is more frequent than we believe.


I would like Lufthansa to succeed. The EU has created legislation in EU 261 to enforce standards - Lufthansa needs to rise to meet the spirit of the demands on duty of care. The current processes, systems and attitude are a far cry from what needs to be done. I do not think there is enough motivation to improve on Lufthansa's part. Perhaps the EU should enforce compensation payments so that LH finds it too expensive to leave poor snow removal equipment, weak procedures and systems to transfer passengers to other airlines and poor customer service as the norm. Change must be effected!

[lpuri]

Originally Posted by tomw

Lufthansa has NO customer service. This is not a judgment, it is a fact.

They have customers and they have procedures. This works when things go as planned. But when things do not go as planned, companies rely upon customer service. Lufthansa does not. They do ont rely upon customer service because in the face of crisis or a breakdown in the system they do not deviate from their normal operating procedures. For this reason Lufthansa has designed a system to keep customers out of the way. They have built an impenetrable wall to keep customers out.

Lufthansa has no phone contact for customer service. NONE, NADA, NICHT, The only way to communicate with Lufthansa when things go wrong is by fax - and they charge you for that. The card we received says the charge to fax Lufthansa is 0,12 Euros per minute. This may seem odd, but it is only odd if you are concerned about customer service. And Lufthansa is not.

They really do not have customer service.

Customer service fills the void between customers and procedures. Lufthansa is in denial. For them: things go right and they follow normal operating procedures: or things go wrong, and they follow normal operating procedures. Nothing changes. That is why they don't need customer service. In their world customers merely get in the way of normal operating procedures. And when things go wrong Lufthansa's answer is to bear down and focus more on normal operating procedures. The need for this intensified focus is only distracted by customers, so they designed a system to keep customers out of their way. Hence, the Lufthansa impenetrable wall of no communication, no service and no concern - that is their business model.

After my last canceled flight where my family and I were stranded in Munich. Not delayed, abandoned. Left to fend for ourselves, to get to our final destination (Stuttgart) after our international flight into Munich. For 18 months I faxed and wrote letters, including international letters directly to the CEO of Lufthansa. After 32 letters and 16 faxes I gave up. Never got a response from anyone. Not one. Not a call. Not a letter. Not a fax. Not an email. Six of the letters were to executives in Koln.

Lufthansa simply does not care. They have not only have a total disregard for passengers, they have disdain.

Avoid Lufthansa - it is the mantra of the sane. Pass the word...

Nothing has changed since then. I can definitely confirm from my experiences that they have no customer service. Or it is hiding. They even give you false fax numbers on their web page. It took me weeks until I managed to send them my complaint.

[Pelister]

I was injured while getting on a Lufthansa flight out of Atlanta in January 2013. A passenger bumped into me, I dislocated my knee, had to be taken off the plane and taken to the emergency room of a local hospital. I missed the flight, took the next flight the following day. Had to spend the night at a local hotel. Folks at the desk said they will have to write up an accident report and they would contact me for the details. Waited three months - NOTHING! Meanwhile my health insurance would not pay a bill of $1000 for the ambulance service. All I asked was for them to pay the ambulance bill, hotel bill and for couple of hamburgers for myself and my wife. Contacted customer service four times, and each time the answer was "we are working on it", "I should know something in a week", etc.

EU Council Regulation No 2027/1997 on air carrier liability states that the carrier is obliged to pay the victims of an injury an advance proportional to the injury sustained no later than 15 days after identification of the victim. How can they get away with it? I contacted a couple of lawyers in the US, but was told that the injury was not significant enough for them to bother sewing the airline. SO, who is this person in Holland I can contact for help?

[jimworcs]

I am not sure why you feel Lufthansa has liability in this situation. What did they do that was negligent? Don't you first have to establish that they were in some way liable? You may have more chance suing the passenger who did this to you.

The Dutch outfit really focus on enforcing 261 in relation to cancellation and delays. I think this is more a legal matter about liability.

[Pelister]

Originally Posted by jimworcs

I am not sure why you feel Lufthansa has liability in this situation. What did they do that was negligent? Don't you first have to establish that they were in some way liable? You may have more chance suing the passenger who did this to you.

The Dutch outfit really focus on enforcing 261 in relation to cancellation and delays. I think this is more a legal matter about liability.

I don't have any legal experience to argue this on legal grounds. However, the EU regulation clearly states that when a passenger is injured or killed the airline must make an advance payment to cover immediate economic needs within 15 days. Questions of liability come later. I see the airline's liability in the fact that the airline does not provide enough space for two passengers boarding the plane to pass each other together with their onboard luggage. I my case, I was standing in place trying to put my bag in the overhead compartment and a lady tried to pass me and bumped into me with her luggage. Perhaps the airline is not liable regarding this incident.

But, I've heard of cases, on Black Friday, when there are hundreds, or thousand of people waiting for the doors to a store to open. In the rush inevitable some people get hurt, or even die. Is the store negligent? Well, there have been cases where stores have been found negligent.

If an airplane gets struck by lightening, is forced to land, some passengers get hurt, Do they get any compensation?

A female student gets raped in a school dormitory, is the school negligent?

When I was contemplating posting my complaint I decided to post it in the section on customer service because my complaint at the moment is against their lack of any service, namely, their unwillingness to even talk to me about this. I am quite convinced that I will not get a dime from them. I'm just hoping that at least ten people who read this will decide not to fly Lufthansa. Reading other people's complaints, it's obvious that whatever problem you encounter with Lufthansa don't expect that you will get any response from them.

By the way, aren't they required by law to send an accident report, one that results in an injury, to the FAA and to whatever European agency? No one ever contact me to hear my side of the story. And they said they would.

[jimworcs]

Well you raise some interesting scenarios, but I think you have to look at the intent of the regulation. In the event of an accident, the airline will make an ex-gratia payment to relieve hardship and leave liability to be settled later, perhaps. But in this case, I think you would have a hard time making such a case. Narrow aisles are inherant in the design of the aircraft and they would simply argue that if there is insufficient room for two, the woman should not have attempted to brush past you. She was negligent. It is not the same thing as the rush of shoppers. In that scenario, the shop has created the conditions under which large crowds gather for very limited numbers of items, at exceptionally low prices. Therefore, the shop has created the conditions under which the risk is known and they must do what they can to mitigate it. A female student, raped in a school dormitary does not make the school automatically liable. If the school knew there was predator, failed to take adequate security measures or the rapist was in their employ and under their control perhaps...but a random act by a stranger doesn't automatically create liability because it took place on your premises. If a rapist dragged a woman off the street into your garden and raped her, does that create liability for you because it happened on your property?

I think you are right about this. Lufthansa have treated you badly. The lack of response it outrageous and it would at least give you some certainty. If they wrote back, stating unequivocably that they do not consider themselves to have any liability, you would at least have had the courtesy of a reply. Many airlines adopt the ignore them and hope they go away strategy and you are rightly annoyed. It is, as you say, also abundantly clear from this forum and others that this is not an isolated incident, but a pattern.

Nevertheless, I don't think on the facts you have presented here that they are liable. I am not a lawyer however, so depending on your jurisdiction, you could take a punt on filing a small claims court claim. In the UK, that would cost you maybe 30 pounds, no lawyers required, can be done entirely online and has the big advantage of forcing the airline to respond. If they fail to do so, they will have a judgement entered against them. Depends on how strongly you feel about it.

[Pelister]

Interesting!
Only about a week after my post here I get a note from Lufthansa that my request for a refund has been approved! Is that a coincidence, or is someone at Lufthansa reading these posts? I hope the latter is true.

[jimworcs]

I think it is impressive they have paid the full compo you asked for! Well done, that must have been a persuasive letter!