American Airlines earned an enemy

If there's one thing I know about other airlines, I know this story could not have happened there, because.... well, I'm having a little trouble here.

I mean, losing your bag sucks, but it's a weird case: how many times a year do you think that someone takes the wrong bag, then takes the effort to call American and let them know, but then fails to actually return the bag?

And it's hardly a case for interpol, either. "Check the call logs"? Yeah, Lebowski, they got four more detectives working the case, in shifts.

Oh man, just seeing the words "American Airlines" gets me all riled up.

About a year ago I was helping my fiancée move apartments in Dallas, and the move was taking a bit longer than we had hoped. We had time to finish it before my departure later that evening, but we would have had to run out the door as soon as the last box was put down to make it in time. I called American to see how hard it would be to move my flight to the next morning. "No problem!" I was told, "Just a small fee." I was then told to call back less than 12 hours before the flight I wanted to be moved to, because they couldn't reschedule me before then. Easy enough, right?

My 5PM flight departure comes and goes, and around 11PM (<12 hours before the flight the next morning) I call into American and relay the information I was told by the previous rep. After a half hour of being passed back and forth between representatives, I'm finally handed of to a supervisor, who tells me "That's not how it works, nobody here would have told you that, and we have no record that you've ever called us before. You'll have to pay full price for another flight because you didn't call to cancel your previous one before departure and the flight has already landed." My jaw dropped. I asked her if she thought I was making this up, to which she simply repeated, "Look, nobody here would have told you that, and we have no record that you've ever called us before."

I've never in my life been so insulted. I've never had a customer service representative call me a liar before or again. At this point in my life I was flying at least monthly, and used American exclusively. Since then I haven't flown with them once.

Customer service is all but dead, and not just with the airline industry. I dread ever having to deal with a company outside of basic transactions.

I used to think this was due to some sort of societal shift towards being people being more dick-ish and self-absorbed, but now I think it is just a case of efficiency run amok.

In order for companies to be efficient they define very narrow roles for employees, define a narrow set of likely interactions, and train only for dealing with those and then eventually base performance metrics off of only that narrowly defined set of predefined actions. When something even slightly out of the ordinary occurs, nobody is incentivized or authorized to take steps off the playbook to make things right. So you end up with massive gridlock where the employees can't really help you so they stall and redirect, which is probably almost as frustrating for them (I'm assuming here, I don't work in customer service) as it is for us.

Even the modern companies lauded for their great customer service like Amazon or Apple pretty much fit into this "pre-defined interactions" model but side-step some of the bigger problems by just having a very liberal "okay, we'll swap it for you with no questions asked" policy, which is still just a mostly automatic process and in some cases doesn't actually fix the real problems, but at least it is a policy under which the customer makes out better than in the usual case of being sent on a wild-goose chase of contacts only to eventually smash into a brick wall.

Shocking that AA would be this customer-hostile, but I thought stories of lost luggage/carrier incompetence were old news. This is why I never check bags, and if I did I wouldn't sweat the airline to cover the loss. That's what renters insurance is for.

There's a lesson here about not trusting mission-critical details (in this case, DHH's bag), to an unknown and frequently maligned system. Nothing irreplaceable should ever go into a checked bag.

Oh boy, rant against how bad the airlines are #832,291,845 made it to the front page! I can't wait for the circle jerk discussion about how bad they suck!

The airline industry is screwed up. Rising fuel prices, increased security measures after 9/11, inefficient governments, international rules to be taken care of, high basic cost of operation, etc.

It needs a revolution, from the likes of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, etc.

Having said that, I feel like an airline can do a lot of make the travel experience easier for their passengers. Some airlines, such as Virgin, even try. But, in the absence of a plausible explanation, I would just go with lower standards of ethics. It is the same disease that plagued the financial system.

These airlines just need to understand this simple fact: if you delight your customers, they will come back and be willing to pay more for the same trip. You don't need alliances and frequent flier miles to buy the loyalty of your customers.

Yeah, I never plan to fly American Airlines. These are the same guys who fired one of their UX guys for taking the time to reply to a blog about a redesign of their homepage. Check it out: http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html

Luckily I've had bags "lost"/delayed and then appear..etc but not to your extent. That sucks what happened but the sad story is that it can happen on other airlines. US mainly from my experience. A friend of mine swore off Lufthansa after a pretty bad luggage experience. American/United/US Air.etc...there is something missing between customer experience and running a smooth operation. For airlines that spend so much on efforts to acquire users, their handling of customers is just bad.

There are some airlines that do better such as Singapore but they are in the minority. I don't even expect good customer service if I have to deal with an airline anymore.

This post has definitely been getting flagged. It jumped from #3 to #25 in like 3 seconds. Some folks here don't seem to like DHH rants. (:

Edit: looks like it's back up now.

I had the same experience. AA lost a bag, then had to wait almost 4 months to get reimbursed a mere $600 dollars (I asked for $2800).

Worse, is that they only reimburse for items for which you have receipts (who saves all their receipts?) and they can refuse to refund you for anything. At the end they refund me for the bag cost plus a present for which I had a receipt. No refund for anything else I had in the bag.

I find it extremely annoying that most airlines and airports do not seek too ensure that passengers do not mistakenly pick up someone else's luggage. There have been several occasions when I had to chase after my very generic looking grey Samsonite that was picked up by other passengers. I do not recall a security agent at arrivals checking my luggage cart with my checked-in baggage barcodes .

I don't want to sound entitled or mean, but how is this relevant and who even upvotes this?

Just pack an unloaded firearm in your bag and declare it. They will sure as sh*t not be losing that bag.

Or just fly Virgin next time ;).

Mostly not American's fault. Sh*t happens.

Pick Two: Quality, Customer Service, and Price

Reddit material - this doesn't belong here.