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Dear Mr. Baldanza:
I am writing to you to convey my experience with your Reservation center. I sent a letter to you on June 5, 2008 and never received a response. I have a voucher from a previous cancellation for which I wanted to redeem and book two additional seats on the same flight from Detroit to Las Vegas. We tried to book the flights online, but the system was slow.
My wife telephoned your Customer Service number 800-772-7117 Wednesday, June 4, 2008 around 5:30 pm. She waited 45 minutes for an agent and then proceeded to redeem the voucher. The Agent had apologized for the computer system being slow and the voucher number uploading. We requested Flight number 771 departing DTW at 6:05am. She asked to place us on hold until she could receive a confirmation in which we agreed. We were never connected again so my wife tried to again book the reservation online using our voucher, but the online site stated it was an invalid number. So she tried to telephone again and waited 45 minutes but since it was getting late and we get up for work early, she hung up.
I telephoned at around 6:30 am Thursday, June 5, to the toll free number and awaited 1 hour and 26 minutes before an agent answered. I proceeded to answer the agents question as to departure city and arrival city, dates, and then requested the 771 morning flight. The agent told me it was sold out and the only flight available at that price was 711 departing at 8:05pm. I asked her if she was sure it was not available and she stated again no. So I proceeded to book the flight for myself using the voucher, then a flight for my wife, Linda Linko, and my Father-in-law, William Snedden. After receiving the record locator codes for each flight, W5KGFP, NCJUGH, and ZCS74H. I then asked the agent if I could pay for my baggage fee for each passenger now and she stated there was no baggage fee for baggage under 40 pounds.
This evening, Thursday, June 5th, my wife went online to Spirit Air and the 771 flight was showing it was available. So we again called the Customer hotline, waited 1 hour before talking to JP, the agent’s name. He said if we had to change to the morning flight it would cost us $70 each to change flights. My wife and I were both on the telephone and explained to him that the agent in the morning told us the morning flight, 771 was full and I could not book it, but it was showing open online. He proceeded to try and change our reservation and was able to book us for the morning flight, but not able to waive the fee. We asked him to allow us to speak to a Supervisor and he tried for 40 minutes to contact one while we were on hold so he came back on to tell us he could not. We told him we would continue to wait since we have been on the telephone for this long. We were finally connected to Ray, badge number 7540130, Operations Supervisor. Ray told us we have to pay the fee to change the flight from 711 to 771. We explained we were told the morning flight was booked and offered the evening flight, but when we checked today it was showing available online. He stated we were incorrect and sometimes the computers do not reflect what the agents show. We again explained that JP was able to book the flights but not waive the fee, so they were available. He then said the agent did not tell us it was booked, we were wrong. I explained we had no reason to lie and he said the conversations are taped. We also stated that we had no reason to lie since we were patient enough to wait almost two hours to speak to Ray. I asked him if he could review our taped conversation and call us back he said he could not.
I don’t know what you think your level of Customer Service should be, but we consider our last two days of trying to obtain a flight with your airline an absolute nightmare. If we did not have a voucher in our possession, we would not have booked flights on your airline. We have received email confirmation for one flight only and not the other two and we are worried now if the flights are even booked.
We are aware of the problems of the Airline industry and the competitiveness of the business as your expenses escalate out of control, but we would think that preserving your customer base would be a priority.