[William Johnson]

CONTINENTAL AIRLINES
Ms. Anne Munoz
Director, Customer Care
P.O. Box 4607, NHCCR
Houston, TX 77210-4607
(800) 932-2732


July 12, 2010
Dear Ms. Anne Munoz,

I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with my return flight last week on July 7, 2010
on Flight CO1588 from San Diego to Houston-Bush International connecting to Flight CO 582 to my destination Boston, MA.

Our plane / Flight CO1588 took off in San Diego at 1:05 pm, (20 minutes late), then the pilot said we would arrive 15 minutes early. Then 30 minutes from landing in Houston, Texas the pilot came on the overhead speakers to say that we were "in cue" to land and that we had to circle 4-5 times because the weather at the airport was poor, then after circling 4-5 times we were told the Houston-Bush Airport was closed, and the plane was diverted to land in Austin, Texas. Upon landing in Austin we were held on the plan for 2.5 hours in the on the ground waiting to go to Houston, we first needed to refuel before we could take off to complete our flight to Houston. Upon arriving to Houston, Texas at 9:20 pm, almost 7 hours later on the same plane, I found out my connecting flight CO582 had left at 8:29 pm. I missed my flight because we had to divert to Austin, then wait for refueling and clearance to land in Houston almost 2.5 hours. Upon arriving in Houston at 9:20 pm July 7, 2010, I was told that my flight was automatically rebooked at leave Houston 6:05 pm the next day. I was told there were “no planes out of Houston to Boston that day on any airline”!. I asked to be rebooked on an earlier flight at 3:30 pm the next day and then received a Hotel voucher for a discounted rate to the airport Hotel which did not accept the voucher (yet the Continental crew stayed at the same Hotel), and I paid $279.63 to sleep 7 hrs, and then got on a stand-by flight the next morning at 7:45 am. Please see enclosed ticket information and receipt. The service from the ticket counter was very poor the night of July 7, when I got in, they would not even try to book me on another airline to complete my travel, they would not book me on the first flight out to Boston at 7:45 am the next day. They said I would have to show up and do stand-by. They said they were not required to give me a complete hotel voucher because the weather was the cause of me missing my flight? When in actuality it was a lack of operational services at Austin, Texas airport and the lack of efficient refueling that was Continental Airlines fault. We were on the ground for 2.5 hours to get jet-fuel, that when the truck showed up it took 10 minutes to refuel the plane? Would you please reimburse me for the Hotel expenses I incurred during this travel with Continental Airlines?

Sincerely,


William Johnson

[jimworcs]

Dear Mr. Johnson,
Thank you for taking the time to write to us about your experience with Continental Airlines. I am sorry to hear that you had a poor experience of our customer service during your delay. We at Continental are committed to the highest level of service to our customers. However, we have learned that providing high customer service standards doesn't really help. We used to provide this, (under our previous CEO) only to find that our competitors such as Delta provided such bad service that they went bankrupt. The government then rescued them, nursing them through Chapter 11, and then rewarded them by allowing them to take over Northwest and become even more dominant and the largest airline in the world. So, you can see that competing on quality gets you no where in this market. We have therefore decided to take the same approach. You can now expect us to screw our customers royally, treat them badly..and in due course we will be allowed to merge with United and become the largest airline in the world, with even more power to screw customer. See how that works Mr. Johnson? So there we have it.... we screw you and make more money... we provide better customer service and our competitors are rewarded and make more money. What would you do in our situation?

Thank you for taking the time to tell us about your experience. We have filed in the recycling and look forward to serving you again, as you have little choice any more.

Yours sincerely,

Anna Munoz