I used to live out of planes and hotels (literally, I worked for a hotel company) but I haven’t traveled much for the past five years. This afternoon I had an ugly experience that reminded me of the sad truth of long-distance travel: crappy customer service can wreck your trip, and great customer service is worth extra money.
I tried to check in via the web around 1pm for my 3:45pm US Airways flight back from the Quest offices in Orange County, CA. The web site informed me that something had changed about my flight, and that I needed to call the US Airways customer service number. I called, gave them my confirmation number, and got placed on hold. A few minutes later, the voice returned and informed me that my flight had been cancelled.
Period.
I waited to hear the next words out of her mouth, because I’m thinking, this is typical, right? These things happen. It’s a big company. They must have a system for this, a checklist that defines what step happens next. I know things break, and I’m cool with that. When I’m traveling and things break, I’m really cool when it happens on the ground. It’s when things break in the air that I get fidgety.
But she doesn’t keep going. To her, that was it.
I prompted her by asking, “Okay, what next? Is there a later flight, and can you rebook me?” She put me on hold for a few more minutes to go find out.
While I was on hold, I started wondering what she’d done the first time she went on hold. Was it that hard to find out the flight was cancelled? Why make me wait that long and not have an answer ready for what the next question would be? Did she think I was just going to stay in Orange County for the rest of my life? Had any customer in the entire history of US Airways ever been told their flight was cancelled and simply responded with, “Okey dokey, sounds like we’re done here! Thanks!”
She came back and said the next flight would be the next day. I said okay, no problem, go ahead and book me. She asked to put me on hold again, but I asked if she could skip putting me on hold, because my cell phone battery was almost dead. She put me on hold anyway.
When she came back, she said I was all set to fly out the next day. I asked which hotel they were putting me up at, and that’s when things went south pretty fast. To be honest, I didn’t expect them to put me up in a hotel, but I was cheesed off enough that they’d cancelled the flight without calling me, without rebooking me on another flight, and without seeming like they had any semblance of a Plan B when I called.
She started talking to someone else in the same room, escalated it to a supervisor, and didn’t do a particularly good job of holding her finger over the microphone. Actually, to be honest, I think she was passing the microphone around to the different people in the room, because I heard them pretty clearly. One of them said something to the effect of, “He said his battery was almost dead, right? Hang up on him.”
And they did.
Rather than call ‘em back, I called the Quest travel department, who performed like rock stars. Within the first two minutes of the call, she identified that all of the flights out of Orange County, LAX and Long Beach were booked, with the exception of an LAX flight that I couldn’t make in time. She got me booked on a 6:15 AM flight, booked me into an airport hotel, emailed the updated confirmation info to me and asked if there was anything else she could do to make it easier.
All in less time than the US Airways rep had me on hold before she told me the flight was cancelled.
The taxi dropped me off at the Hyatt, and it turned out that the cab went to the wrong Hyatt. Jessica at the Hyatt Regency Irvine front desk said no problem, called the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, got the reservation moved, kept the same discounted corporate rate that Quest had at the other Hyatt, and kept apologizing the whole time about my cancelled flight.
I got into my room, called down for room service, and the great service kept going. The operator cheerfully greeted me by name, and she told me when the food would be ready – but she did it in a way that I rarely hear. She said, “We’re running about 30 minutes right now, so your food should be there just before 4 PM.” Usually, I hear things like, “It’ll be half an hour to an hour depending on how busy they are.” They – what do you mean they? It’s you. You’re they. At the Hyatt, there was no “they” – it was “we.” I love that. And you know the food showed up in 25 minutes, because that’s the kind of operation they’re running. Wow.
So yeah, I’m stuck in California for another night, and I miss Erika and Ernie, and I wish I was home sleeping in my own bed. But if it wasn’t for the happy folks I dealt with after the wackos at US Airways, things could be a lot worse.
