bhrubin

^^^

There are some rude and selfish and stupid people out there. Unfortunately, some of them fly on airplanes. And vote.

canadiancow

Why wouldn't one of you just move?

When I was in a similar situation with someone, we were in 1DF, and we spread out to 1F/2D (or something like that).

I mean it's great what you did, but there was an easier solution if it was actually empty

mrobert

Well... he was fine, I was fine and we totally forgot about it once we engaged in conversation. And trust me, nothing is more captivating than an airline pilot telling stories

why fly

to the vote part!

payam81

This is fantastic! It may in time even spread to other airlines hopefully.

Do you have a link to this? I couldn't find anything after a cursory search.

go_around

Complaint was via online form. They have given 20% promo code off next booking - not sure I'll have the opportunity to use it but a fair response from their side.

margarita girl

I like AC and have no problems with their FAs. I hate their FF program, but that's another matter.

So I'm on my way to the U.S. this morning on a ticket booked with Lifemiles. Automatic seat assignment gave me row 27 on E175 beside the toilet.

When I tried to check in, saw most seats in the back were full, but lots of availability for preferred seats. Called AC and asked nicely if they could move me up since I was a million miler rather than putting Tango customers up front. Helene said "Your million whatever means nothing. If you want a preferred seat you have to pay for it." I can't imagine a UA agent ever talking to me like that. Helene should really get a job with Bell Canada.

Anyhow, I asked her to just remove my seat assignment. Checked in a few hours later and poof, I'm in 13F for free.

yyznomad

Kudos to AC for fostering further BS and ill-will.

Helene, there's a position waiting for you at Bell Canada.

Again, soft product is a piece of junk. Perhaps AC could take a PR page out of UA's recent PR book on improving customer relations. (not that they were successful in doing so under Smisek)

AC -> Your soft product is a piece of garbage and needs mega work.

SFO777

LOL. That's the Air Canada customer service I remember.

DNAwizard

AC must improve their soft product if they are serious about becoming a 5* airline... With attitude like this, explicitely belittling top tier members, they will never reach that status
Their call.

nihonto

I am late to this thread.

Sorry OP but to me you sound like "That Guy".

Everyone else has to suffer.

FA would not come and ask you to put the window shade down for no reason.

In your opinion the "sleep portion" was finished, but not in the opinion of every other passenger and the flight crew it seems.

If you get claustrophobic when you fly then I fail to see how you can take an overnight flight at all, that excuse doesn't hold any water.

Because *you* didn't see someone complain doesn't mean someone didn't complain. There are things going on behind your head. People get up out of their seats to talk to the flight crew instead of summoning them too (I do that). Especially if other people are sleeping and they don't want to disturb them.

And according to you, you "have to be looking" out the window no? But meanwhile able to scan the entire cabin for stray movement.

Your inability to notice anyone complaining and your accusation of the FA lying just sounds to me like more of your entitlement zone of important things you're aware of not passing much further than your fingertips.

Sounds to me like you're just a guy who wants to do what you want to do regardless of how it impacts everyone else, and don't like being told you can't do it. Your life and everyone's life would have been made a lot more simple by just going, "Oh, sorry" and dealing with the horrible inconvenience of a closed window shade for another hour or two.

Reminds me of being at a beach restaurant at an expensive resort watching the sun go down and enjoying the lapping of the waves. There was a band playing mellow music and some guy decides to take out his phone, put it on speaker, max and start blasting his own music.

People just get wrapped up in themselves, don't care about the radius of other people being affected by their decision (in this case, let alone the fact that a band was playing with a singer already) .

Or this. Why should I have to move? I was there first.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...use-budge.html

yyznomad

I think the OP is long gone from this thread.

nihonto

That's got nothing to do with Helene and everything to do with the instructions and powers she's been given by her superiors.

You asked for special treatment based on a status which is pretty meaningless to them (how much money you already spent) as they have made this pretty clear over the last few years.

She told you the truth. Your MM status means nothing in terms of seat assignment.

It's not part of the program.

Being mad at her is beheading the messenger. You should be emailing the CEO who is promptly going to delete your email and send you a form letter because he doesn't give a rodent's behind.

You should be thankful that your past spend gives you anything at all with them.

I say this not agreeing with what they do at all, I quite disagree with it. Just, I think you need to put the blame where it's due: on the execs who decided that your past spend doesn't mean anything and the bean counters who told them that they will make more money ignoring a request like yours and charging people for those seats.

yyznomad

Look, it wasn't like MG was asking for the world. It was a simple ask.

Even if the agent was "taking orders", there are other ways to word the response - it's called soft skills.

These areas of communication is where AC could improve - at no extra cost to them.

Besides, MG just proved a point - she was denied something that she ended up doing herself, meaning that AC could have simply executed the ask for her.

MG was not asking for her buttocks to be kissed and then wiped.

nihonto

Everyone on this website and everyone in the world is the hero of their own story. All of these posters (regardless of their constant aggressiveness and desire to enter scraps on this website) are otherwise in their life uniformly reasonable, polite, kind and gentle. Always the other party is aggressive, rude, impolite and definitely in the wrong. Especially when we can't hear their side.

Anything that is said by anyone needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

Usually it's the message that upsets people, the "Sorry but you can't have that" and the "how it's said" part is flavored by their subjective experience of being told no, you can't have that toy.

Reports of rude agents and horrible staff generally have to be taken with a grain of salt as they are rarely as bad as the person reporting it claims it to be, as it's all taken through their viewpoint where they are already the party to which an injustice is being done.

If she asked for a free seat as a MM'er and the answer was that she doesn't get it as part of the program, if she doesn't agree with that then we all know what to do: HUCA.

That's fun for hyperbole but the point is only this:

She asked for something the agent was not entitled to give her, or the agent believed she was not entitled to give her.

No agent will ever be perfect. We know we can sit there for 30 minutes and argue about how we know the rules better and it will get us nowhere. And sometimes they actually do know the rules better. But we know in this case when an agent says no you just politely say OK, and then HUCA.

And if the agent really can't deliver what you want, it's not the agent's fault, and I am not arguing that she doesn't deserve that assistance or the benefit.

If I could decide then she would get it.

But I am not deciding: AC execs are deciding this crap and they are the ones that should take the flak for it.

Front line staff usually gets blamed as the messenger. As in the case of OP he thinks that this FA was the rudest person in the world for telling him something he didn't want to hear, that in the interests of all the passengers, would he please close his windowshade. Yet there he was, "that guy", entitlement dripping off of his godlike form like rays of light from the sun, doing something to discomfort the entire cabin.

So, I don't buy the reports. I'd buy the reports of horribly rude staff if I observed more than I have in 20+ years (zero cases) and observed less passengers being entitled self obsessed jerkfaces (every flight).

But in the case where the agent is just factually wrong, it happens, and it will keep happening, and if a customer gets their hackles up because the agent is wrong on something and gets pushy then the agent will tend to get testy too.

It's human nature and the worst job in the world is being customer facing phone support. There are limited ways of fixing that when customers are being irate all day long, even when customers are irate with justification.

AC is setting itself up for conflicts when they are doing things like the carryon checks with zero tolerance and charging bag fees and making the flying process more painful than it should be. Then they give out benefits which they continually peel back and make customers feel even more robbed (this goes exactly against Machiavelli's advice, which is to give people NOTHING because people won't recognize what you give them for any useful amount of time but they will surely remember when you take it away after giving it to them and judge you by that).

Again it points back to the decisions that the execs are making that force the customer facing reps to deal with things that are next to impossible for humans to deal with all day.

Really, if you want a slice of punishment, spend 8 hours on the phone all day dealing with customer requests. It's something I would wish on nobody. I'm amazed that they can even keep their sanity.