[eldarymli]

Date: 21.10.2010
Cell: [removed]
Mailing Address: [removed]
[removed]
Canada

RE: Complaint

Dear Madam or Sir:

Good day.
My name is [removed]. I and my wife [removed] travelled onboard Air France from Istanbul to Paris to Montreal, Canada on October 18, 2010. This was our first experience ever with Air France.

Our flight details were as follows:

My wife:
[removed]
Flight: AF 2391
Istanbul (IST) to Paris (CDG)
Seat: 19 F
Flight: AF 344
Paris (CDG) to Montreal (YUL)
Seat: 20 C

[removed]
Flight: AF 2391
Istanbul (IST) to Paris (CDG)
Seat: 19 E
Flight: AF 344
Paris (CDG) to Montreal (YUL)
Seat: 24 E

While my experience flying onboard Air France was unique and joyful, I would like to complain about one of your check-in officers in Istanbul Ataturk Airport. Her name is Ms. Filiz Buladi . Ms. Buladi subjected me and my wife to an extremely discriminative attitude and intolerable treatment. I would summarize our odd encounter with Ms. Buladi which we had never experienced with any other airlines below:

1- While I and my wife were in the process of getting our baggage smoothly checked in with some Air France check-in officer, Ms. Buladi (deliberately chose us from among all other people) came from nowhere and instructed us to remove our baggage from the check-in counter where we were talking with some other check-in officer (who was so much cheerful), and she asked us to go somewhere else to make sure that the baggage weight is within the allowed 23 KG per bag. I explained to Ms. Buladi that we have no problem paying any fees for additional baggage allowance but Ms. Buladi insisted that we must give up our turn and cut some bags’ weight down to 23 KG. Please note that the baggage weight did not exceed 32 KG.

2- Ms. Buladi asked me and my wife to weight our small laptop bags along with two carry-on bags. The total weight including laptops was 26 KG. Ms. Buladi insisted that we should remove 2 KG from either one of our carryon bags though they were both within the 12 KG limit per person. Ms. Buladi insisted that the 12 KG allowance includes laptops!
3- I and my wife stand there to watch other Air France customers pass through the check-in counter with carry-on bags and a laptop bag, however, no one was ever asked to weight their laptop bag!
4- I would like to highlight here that Ms. Buladi initially was not the check-in officer responsible for handling our check-in, however, for some reason; she chose to take us away from that check in counter and personally cause us unrelated trouble.
5- We cut the bag weight down as per Ms. Buladi instructions and paid the required fees for an additional bag, which I told her from the very beginnig that I am willing to pay!
6- We again went to a check-in counter, however, Ms. Buladi again came to us and said that I and my wife must leave the check-in counter where we were standing and do our check in through her.
7- I and my wife went with Ms. Buladi, and after she double checked the bag weight she allowed them in, however, she delayed us for about another 20 minutes asking completely unrelated questions.
8- Ms. Buladi first looked at the Canadian immigrant visa in my wife’s passport and kept asking her questions like are you permanent resident of Canada? Where is you permanent resident card? I must stress here that my wife has on her passport a very recent single entry immigrant visa to Canada. I do not see any connection between Ms. Buladi's question and the very clear visa on my wife’s passport!
9- Then, Ms. Buladi looked at my Canadian travel document and asked me where I am originally from? I responded that I do not have to answer this question, don’t I? Ms. Buladi then responded that she must see my Permanent Resident Card in Canada, where I had no problem showing it to her. I mentioned to her that it seems that I have to call my Canadian embassy in Ankara. When I said this, Ms. Buladi started telling me that she is doing this because if Canada returns me back she will have to pay Euros 400 or so from her own salary!!! Ms. Buladi kept my documents for few minutes with her then she returned them to me and gave us our boarding passes.
10- After leaving the check-in counter and on our way to passport check-in, I was surprised to find out that I was not given a boarding pass for my trip from Istanbul to Paris!!!
11- I and my wife had to go back all the way to the check-in counter and ask Ms. Buladi to provide me with my Istanbul-Paris boarding pass. Ms. Buladi printed out the pass for me but she did not even bother to apologize for this unusual treatment!
12- After I and my wife completed our passport check-in, and on our way to the airplane for boarding, we were extremely disappointed to find out that Ms. Buladi did not provide us with adjacent seats for our trip from Paris to Montreal (more than 7 hours of flying). She provided my wife with seat number 20 C and myself with seat number 24 E! Although we requested that she provides us with adjacent seats. She completely ignored our request and pretended as if she fulfilled it! Please note that two days prior to this trip, I contacted Air France’s customer support and I was advised that seats can be smoothly assigned upon check-in in the airport! We had to request a seat change from Air France upon our arrival to Paris. In, Paris airport, we were treated so fairly and we had no problem at all to fulfill our request for seats' reassignment.

I do understand that part of what Ms. Buladi did fall within her job mandate; however, I do not find a sensible explanation on why Ms. Buladi was so eager to make our trip miserable! I got friends travel on board Air France and they used to praise your professional attitude, however, from my personal experience with your employee Ms. Buladi, I must say that I am extremely disappointed.

Given this kind of attitude, I may be forced to avoid traveling onboard Air France in the future to avoid such intolerable discrimination of Ms. Buladi! Because I still have faith in your managerial professionalism, I am writing this complaint to you.

I hope that my complaint will be given a proper attention.

Thank you.

[removed]
[removed]

[jimworcs]

Convincing... Ms. Buladi sounds like a nightmare! Lets put her in the hall of shame!