[supertuber]

Normally i cant be bothered to complain about airlines or other companies, but i am so angry with TAM Brazilian. I have travelled with them 4 times now and have not once has a simple trip (lost luggage once, cancellation with no compensation once, charged double stated price for surfboards), but this time i'm really really angry at the service.
To cut a long story short i booked a ticket with a three month return gap and ensured i could change my return date should i need to. I accept that the airline has admin costs and thought the $100 was fair enough.
Anyway, my Grandfather died during my trip to Peru forcing me to return home for the funeral and to comfort my mother. I duly telephoned the Peru office only to be redirected to Argentina where they told me i have to go to the TAM office in Lima to get the excess fee calculated. I assure you this is a major pain when i was 3 hours outside of Lima and had to take a bus because they cant calculate it at the Argentina call centre. I was within business hours by the way.
I got to the office and nearly fell over when they told me the charge was going to be $980!! HOW CAN THEY CHARGE THAT?? My original return ticket was only $730! I was told it is standard practice to sell me a seat cheaply and then increase the cost if no cheap seats were available. Apaparently there are 16 prices of economy seats. I just dont get it!! How can they sell me a seat and tell me i can change my return date for $100 and then blatantly rip me off for another $980??
The bottom line is i couldn't pay the $980 as i volunteer teaching english at a kids orphange and was then told if i wait for 12 days i could fly for $344 which i have had to do.
This has made me sooooo angry with TAM. I have telephoned three times with a promise of a return call but been ignored. I have emailed FOUR times and been ignored and i am now beyond anger so i have taken it upon myself to discredit TAM by every means open to me.
I am setting up a website www.donotflytam.com and using my (and friends) web expertise to make sure it appears directly under TAM's own google search. I am also setting up a facebook and myspace group which will go out to the 12,000 contact we have.
On top of that i am creating a 10 minute video on TAM which will include their safety record, customer service and any other detrimental information i can find and then post it on youtube.com. PLEASE post any bad experiences here and i will put them on my site also. I am not interested in other airlines as this site is the KING for that. I just want to hurt TAM.
I am annoyed about the money, but i am insanely angry about missing my Grandfathers funeral and not being there to comfort my mum. They had plenty of empty economy seats available which i could of had, but they chose to ignore me and rip me off when they could easily have just let me pay the penalty of $100 and get home. I didn't want anything for free, just a fair deal.
TAM are my new hobby now and i will use every means possible to damage their business because i really believe they deserve it. I am supposed to a valued customer and they treated me like filth.
Oh and not only do they charge me $344 i also have to fly from Lima to Sao Paulo then to Paris after a 10 hour connection and then to London. after another 6 hours when they could just let me pay the $100 as agreed and fly one stop to London with a two hour connection wait.
Is this fair?? It is the most stupid way to do business and like i say i am going to make them rue the day they ignored me. My website will stay up and grow forever as a thorn in their own websites side!!
I now understand why people go to such extreme measures and if i am called a crank i dont care .... i'm bloody angry with them.
No business should be allowed to rip their customers off or ignore complaints without suffering for it. They make us suffer after all.
OH the food is rubbish, legroom not great, and they get the gate numbers wrong at Sao Paulo every time.
OK, rant over for this site.

Thanks for the opportunity to vent my anger!

[Jetliner]

Well you better set that website up to be don't-fly-any-airline.com.

On any airline you fly one, if you have a coach ticket, you will have to pay the fare increase. Since you were changing it to a flight right then (or at least the next few days) all that would be left are walk up fares, which are the most expensive.

[FortHay]

While I have had my share of headaches with TAM, you should know that I think major US carriers are now worse. I just found out (yesterday) AA would charge me $45 to seat my family together, even though we already have assigned seats. When I called the TAM agent for the third leg of our international itinerary, she was polite curteous and efficient, making the change at no extra cost.
The good ole days of professional and full customer satisfaction with VARIG are, alas, gone. The best you can hope for is apply some "jeitinho" when dealing with the Brazilian carriers, but they have learned a lot of bad "business" practices from the MBA fools in the US and UK.