American Airlines: “It’s a privilege to tell you we don’t care.”
Update - as of March 11, 2008 for travel booked for April trip.
Two round-trip tickets on AA, Albuquerque to New Orleans: $508.00 (lowest average fare)
Baggage Fee: $50.00 (that they insisted on charging and keeping for my “overweight” luggage coming off an international flight.)
Net Loss (so far): $458.00 (We’re flying Continental.)
Regular readers know of American Airlines’ service snafu, holding my luggage hostage...Am Ex, however, came through (after I wrote the CEO) and issued a credit of $50.00 for “good customer relations.” Too bad AA doesn’t understand the value of customer relations. They’d rather stick with their policy and keep my $50 (and Jake McKee’s $359) than create customer goodwill (and loyalty).
The ongoing, ever-increasingly silly American Airlines snafu is almost good enough to be a Monty Python sketch. (“Oh, so sorry we cut off your leg. We know how painful that must be. However, it is your fault since you happened to be standing in the way of our sword. Oops! See there you did it again. So sorry!”)
How can American Airlines be so completely and utterly clueless about customer service?
Here’s the response I got after sending two copies of my letter to the CEO of AA, Gerard Arpey (as well as a copy to Mark Mitchell, their director of customer service - no response.)
Dear Ms. Schmidt:
We have received a copy of your letter to Mr. Arpey, however, we indicate an email response was provided on January 17. I regret that you did not receive our email response. Rather than risking your not receiving our emails, I have taken the liberty of sending this printed response. A copy of of the text of our previous response is as follows: (Beats me how I missed that email - maybe it got lost in all the AA marketing c’mons trying to get me to buy tickets.)
January 17, 2008
We received your letter to Mr. Arpey We consider it a privilege to respond. Also, we were eager to send you a reply as quickly as possible and recognized your email address off your previous emails to us. Accordingly, we have taken the liberty of responding to you electronically.
We are sorry for the confusion regarding our free baggage allowance. We can understand your disappointment and frustration.
The responsibility to determine if baggage is within our free baggage allowance rests entirely with our field staff at the time of travel. Because we don’t have the benefit of seeing customers’ baggage or seeing the circumstances unfold, we support their decisions regarding such matters. So, we do not make adjustments after the fact. (Begs the question, so do they ever make adjustments before the fact?)
(Here comes the part which confirms nobody actually bothered to read my letter, in which I tell them I was coming from a Delta international flight.)
However, upon researching your reservation, we indicate your American ticket reflects ONLY your domestic itinerary. We can only guess you were holding separate tickets for your international portion. In such cases, the domestic baggage allowance would aplly and our agents advised you, correctly. We regret any misunderstanding.
Still, we share your concerns regarding the insensitive behavior on the part of our personnel. While we have policies and procedures, we expect our employees to be courteous and convey information in a professional manner. Please accept my sincere apology. I have sent a copy of your letter to our Manager at JFK and am certain that your comments will be used, constructively.
Also , we appreciate your suggestions/comments on our online procedures. Your comments enable us to understand things from our customers’ perspective.
Ms. Schmidt, we hope that you will reconsider and give us another opportunity to welcome you aboard. We will do our best to make sure that your trip is a good one.
(One of my issues with American Airlines is I couldn’t resolve the issue quickly via email, so the following is particularly funny.)
I hope you don’t mind that I’ve sent my response via email. Please continue to send us your comments through any communications channel that is most convenient for you. However, we will get your feedback faster and respond more quickly if you contact us again via AA.com.
Sincerely,
Roberto Silva
Alrighty Roberto Roboto - here are three comments for you:
1. Save the pretty words. Basically you’re saying, “F**** off, Schmidt.” That could be scrawled in red crayon on yellow paper - and save AA some dollars spent on paper and ink.
2. Actually read the letters customers send to you.
3. Learn English. “We indicate?” (I strongly suspect that Mr. Silva is like Betty Crocker. “He” doesn’t exist and these letters are generated using boilerplate. The letter and the envelope certainly look like it.)
I’m thinking of donating my 85,000 miles to returning military personnel since I really, really don’t want to fly American under any circumstances now. What would you do?
Want to browse through all my posts? Go to The Idea Pool. Everything I’ve written since I started blogging.
Tags: marketing, marketing troubleshooting, customer service, American Airlines, American Airlines problems, American Airlines customer service,American Express problems, American Express, Mark Mitchell, Gerard Arpey
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March 1st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Hi,
I came across your site while trying to find an actual human being at American to email. My family and I had the worst travel experience ever last week and I wanted to send them a picture of my children sobbing after 11 hours at the airport, but I couldn’t attach it to their form. If you have one, I’d love if you could share it with me.
Thank you, Stephanie
March 5th, 2008 at 8:39 am
[…] just a credit card company” as an Am Ex rep did when I was at wit’s end about an issue with American Airlines. (Note: I escalated to Am Ex CEO office and they finanly issued a “good customer […]
March 5th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I was trying to find an email address to American Airlines because I
read a story n the LA Times a few days ago about how they treated
Mohamed Fikry after he almost reached his 5 million miles with American. That’s a lot of dollars spent with American. I’ve traveled to
Egypt over 30 times since 1975 and am always telling the Egyptian People how nice it is to deal with American companies. They treated
a loyal Egyptian frequent flyer like shit. I think Mr. Fikry should start
flying United Air Lines. The times I’ve flown on American was shit. they got TWA but never learned from them. TWA was excellent and I
will not fly American anymore.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:31 am
[…] Hotwire and went to both Travelocity and Expedia. However, neither had quite a good a deal - and I’ve sworn to never fly AA again (at least not as a paying customer) so several options were […]
March 19th, 2008 at 8:31 am
It mamazes me that “airline bashing” seems to be a national sport. I am amazed that people have a bad travel day and make it their purpose in life to complain, complain, complain about it. Get over it! You can walk, see, hear and obviously have money to fly. Count your blessings. Don’t waste precious moments in life over suck stupid things. There is way too much death, povery and violence in this world. Pick something more productive to direct your anger towards. So basically, build a f*&#ing bridge and get over it. Or better yet, DRIVE!
March 19th, 2008 at 9:08 am
Brad,
And a happy flaming troll day to you too, laddie!
Couple of things - it should be “amazes” not “mamazes” Also, it should be “such” not “suck”
And, the point isn’t my personal unhappiness. Yes, I count myself very fortunate - and I do drive whenever possible (actually, come to think of it - I try to limit even the driving - global heating and all that). However, driving to places like NYC or Europe just ain’t practical.
The point is a company - any company - taking customers’ money and then treating the customers badly. That’s just bad business.
I also agree there are many very important things over which you and I should get (and stay) upset (and do something about) - so why are you here taking out your anger on my blog post about AA? Hmmmm?
March 19th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Oh, and I’ve been remiss in responding to earlier comments with questions. Soooo…
As for finding email addresses - certainly they exist. However, you will get replies from “do not reply” and boilerplate text.
Your best bet to get any response from AA is to call and find a real live person to talk to…and keep trying to move up the food chain. If you get a rude service rep, hang up and call again. Eventually you may get to somebody who actually wants to do a good job (they’re easier to find if you call one of the Frequent Flyer numbers). Yes, even in AA there are people who really want to do a good job.
Keep asking to be escalated (they technically have to do this if asked. However, keep some reading and snacks handy since they will try to outlast you. Old phone service/call center “trick” - put people on hold and hope they leave.)
March 30th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
I travelled with AA Jan 16th of this year i.e., 2008..and they lost my luggage! I filed a claim right away but still haven’t heard anything from them. I am quite frustrated because everytime I call they tell me that someone is actively looking for my luggage in their world wide system! I am not sure how they will find my luggage, I have lost all hopes. They are not willing to tell me what compensation I will get if any and again that compensation is not going to bring back my important stuff like my childhood pictures etc. that was in that suitcase!!
April 1st, 2008 at 7:02 am
[…] They leave comments on (lots of) blogs. (I’m still getting unhappy people on my posts about American Airlines and Home Depot. And they email me…and, one woman even called me - on a Sunday - looking for […]
May 21st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Mary I have a complaint that was poorly attended to.. do you have Mr Arpet emial address so that I can send him a letter. thxs
May 22nd, 2008 at 6:41 am
He won’t reply - but you can send it to the main corporate address. It will be forwarded to someone like Roboto (and it’s Arpey).