Posted by Seth on February 18, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
Not surprisingly, the answer is associated with United and US Airways, both renown for call center problems.
If you were flying on United and had a problem on your flight you could either send a letter, send an email or call the customer service desk. The customer service desk was part of their call center in India, and apparently they weren’t very good at solving customers’ problems. At least that is the story that United’s management wants you to believe. Or, it is possible that they were so ignorant that they just gave vouchers and mile credits for anything and everything that someone complained about, like this guy. Basically United just kept giving him stuff, right up until they did an audit and took it all back:
Our review found that although you flew only 24,891 actual miles in 2008, you contacted us to obtain mileage compensation of 68,500 miles, numerous upgrades, and $5,125 in dollar off certificates.
Our review also found that you were provided with significant compensation due to your initiation of contact with us numerous times over the same issues. Quite frankly, much of this compensation was offered without our knowledge that you had already been appropriately compensated
Sure, but he must just be an outlier, right? Still, what is the best way to ensure prompt and reliable support for customers? Kill the phone lines. United actually pulled the plug on their customer service number and shut down that group at the call center in India, preferring to handle such claims only via email or webpage submissions going forward. They claim that this will let them keep some USA-based employees on the job and save some money from the ICC. Not a bad deal, I’m sure, for everyone except the customers (even those who don’t abuse the system like Mr. Yen above).
Oh, and they seem to have pissed off the Call Center industry in India something special by pulling these jobs out and bringing them back on-shore, though that isn’t really a surprise.
The really had part for me to wrap my head around on this one is that they are going to take folks who were just doing reservations work and now make them do reservations and complaint resolution. And this is going to save 165 jobs in the USA. Were those employees really that underutilized or is this United’s way of saying that they are cutting costs but keeping the employees (unionized, for what it is worth) in the USA but hosing the customers with longer hold times and lack of phone access to problem resolution in many cases? I’m guessing the latter.
US Air has a similar problem. The folks in most of their call centers just weren’t very helpful for the customers. But the Executive Offices out in Arizona had another group of customer service folks who were there to provide a last line of help when everything else came up short. That service was so effective, in fact, that people actually used it. A lot. And so US Air had to put an end to such practices. Rather than forwarding that phone to some other group of internal CSRs who were trained to provide appropriate customer service, US Air just disconnected the line. Call the number and you get a lovely recording from the phone company that the line is no longer in service. Talk about a horrid way to treat your customers.
Posted by Seth on February 18, 2009 under Uncategorized |
There have been a couple columns over the past few weeks which called into question the value of elite status on airlines. Actually they do more than that. Chris Elliott, an otherwise generally pretty good advocate for traveler rights, calls status “generally meaningless” and Nick Kralev’s (also generally on the mark) column this week asks what the value is anymore for such status.
I’m not really sure what burr got under Chris Elliott’s saddle that caused him to rant about status and mileage runs, particularly as it wasn’t really even pertinent to the story he was writing. And Nick Kralev pretty much whiffed completely on the reasons for gaining such status. Let’s start with the part of the column that is mostly accurate:
It’s no secret that, little by little, U.S. airlines have been reducing elite benefits in the last several months — decreasing the frequent-flier miles you can earn for flights but increasing the number of miles needed to redeem "awards," while adding various new fees.
This is only mostly true. Yes, carriers have been increasing fees and the number of points required to redeem awards. But they have been increasing those across the board, not just for elite passengers. Kralev goes on to state that, “One of the most important elite benefits is the ability to redeem miles for "award" tickets in first and business class.” Again, that has absolutely nothing to do with elite status; those awards are open to everyone.
Let me be clear here. I agree that the elite programs are generally worse today than they were five years ago. Fees are up, fine print is finer and there are more elites than ever vying for the limited pool of benefits. But the things being ranted about by these two columnists are completely missing the point of elite status and its value.
One of the biggest benefits for elites is the availability of upgrades. Every carrier has a slightly different policy when it comes to upgrades, but the ability to fly in the big comfy seat while paying for only the crappy small seat is a HUGE benefit and one that actually hasn’t been particularly devalued by any carrier. In fact, looking at the expected drop in travel these days I’d say that even the lower level elites are going to have a reasonable run at upgrades going forward this year.
There is also increased award availability for elites on most carriers. With all the complaints about how hard it is to find reward seats (which I don’t necessarily buy as I generally do OK on that front, but that’s another discussion) having a leg up on the search for inventory is a good thing. Elite status offers that. For some carriers the “rule-buster” awards to guarantee last seat availability also now require elite status. Can one affix a dollar value to that? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that it is worthless, especially on the day that you end up needing to use it.
Elites generally collect more miles than non-elites through various bonuses. This makes reward travel easier as you have more miles to work with. Yes, carriers are cutting these bonuses (US Airways and Continental made cuts on this front for 2009), but they are still generally there in some form and still better than a stick in the eye.
And Delta certainly screwed the pooch when they revoked a whole bunch of benefits from their elites earlier this year, including the waiver of change fees on reward tickets, perhaps my favorite benefit of all. But one airline being stupid doesn’t mean that the whole concept is ruined. And Delta did cave in on some of the changes, but they are clearly playing by the rules of take away a lot, give back a little and call it a compromise so the customer feels like they won something in their protests.
Top-tier elite status also still grants access to lounges on international travel, arguably more valuable today than it was last year. Plus free checked baggage allowances. That is certainly more valuable today than it was a couple years ago.
I don’t think anyone should go out of their way to hit elite status if they aren’t flying enough to take advantage of the benefits. But for folks who legitimately travel enough that being elite is an easily attainable goal, it really does still hold value, even if it isn’t quite the same as it was in the “good old days.” As one of the subjects in Kralev’s piece says, ‘”Flying is such a miserable experience, and elite status is about all there is to take the edge off the pain.” Of course, if you’re paying a lot extra to get that elite status or the carrier to which you are loyal does not return the favor, making a change may be reasonable. But walking away completely rarely is.
Posted by Seth on February 17, 2009 under Uncategorized |
I’m generally a big fan of the jetBlue product but have been a bit of a sourpuss on a few things that they do, notably the TrueBlue frequent flier program and their reservations system. There are rumblings of changes to the TrueBlue program coming and I’ll address those another time, hopefully when there are more actual details on the topic. On the reservations system front there are actual details so I’m excited to share some information on that.
The system that jetBlue runs on today is very limiting. They cannot book codeshare flights on other carriers. They cannot book interline itineraries involving multiple carriers or check bags through to other carriers in most scenarios. In short, it is fine for a small airline, but jetBlue is no longer a small airline. Actually they’re pretty big. And it is time for them to behave that way.
To that end, they have announced a deal with Sabre, one of the largest GDS and reservations systems out there. The new system is a HUGE improvement over the old one and this reveals a great number of opportunities for jetBlue as a carrier. As noted by Rick Zeni, JetBlue’s Vice President of Change Management-Passenger Service System,
Sabre will allow JetBlue to offer greater revenue-producing codeshare and interline partnership opportunities, which will expand network choice for our customers; expanded ancillary revenue and marketing opportunities; and will help us gain more insight into our customers.
There are a few interesting things in that quote. The first are the mentions of codeshare and interline opportunities. Those are the cornerstone of a truly global carrier and the move by jetBlue in this direction is a great one. I’m hopeful that it will mean a tighter integration with Lufthansa, a significant stakeholder, and perhaps the rest of the Star Alliance group. That would be a great move forward.
The other really interesting thing to me is the mention of “expanded ancillary revenue and marketing opportunities.” JetBlue is actually one of the better carriers when it comes to ancillary fees that it charges its passengers, but they do have a few that they charge, and they realize a decent amount of revenue from them (on the order of ~$20/passenger/trip). None of the GDSes out there have ever been able to handle the various ancillary fees as part of the initial price quoting and booking process. The newest version of the booking system that Sabre has, Sabre CSS, actually has that capability built in. That’s a huge change for the system which should benefit jetBlue immensely, assuming it works. And that’s a big question right now, as jetBlue will be the launch customer for that product. Big risk, but a potentially big reward once they get everything running smoothly.
The new system is not expected to actually be in production until some point in 2010, so plenty of time for them to test it and get things running smoothly.
Posted by Seth on February 16, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Here I am, staring down a long weekend and not traveling. It seems a bit strange to me, but it worked out OK in the end. First off, we had a couple different groups of folks travel in to NYC so I got to see many people. Plus, I still got to play tourist a bit.
I headed up to Times Square on Sunday afternoon to wander around and see the tourists play a bit myself. I do this every now and then, mostly for the entertainment value of it. I like the bustle of the people and the many different languages being spoken, among other things. I also like interacting with the visitors, whether taking a photo for them or answering questions, such as “How do we get to Times Square from here?” (actually asked of me yesterday afternoon while standing in front of the TKTS booth).
I also took the opportunity to work on some of my photo skills. As I sat on the steps of the TKTS booth I realized that the varied faces of folks taking pictures presented an interesting little photo project for me. I spent the next 90 minutes or so watching and recording their actions as photographers. I’m very happy with the results of my mini-project:
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More photos from the collection here.
Posted by Seth on February 13, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Continental Connection flight 3047, a Bombardier Dash-8 Q400, crashed last night on approach into Buffalo. All 48 on board died, as did one person on the ground. Horribly, horribly sad.
It seems that there was a run of good luck recently with regards to crashes and people walking away from them, but this is a scary reminder that such luck is fickle. I know the numbers and I realize that I am much safer on an airplane than just about anywhere else. And I certainly am not going to stop flying voluntarily. But this is still a bit sobering.
I woke up to the news on FlyerTalk, with ~350 posts recounting details and providing better information in many cases than the news outlets were able to produce. Everything from links to the ATC radio communication to response team flights to rampant speculation as to the cause were there. And most of the folks online actually had the plane type correct, something the media seems to struggle with.
Even scarier to me on this particular flight is that the flight number is one I considered booking. Not for last night, but the same flight on other days. There were a lot of very cheap fares published a few weeks ago to and from Seattle and I’m going to be flying a few of them in the coming weeks. One of the options was routes to Buffalo. Having been there before and – more significantly to me – realizing that the BUF trips earned fewer miles, I passed on the opportunity. But I was close. Like I said before, I know that the odds are horribly in my favor, but it is still sobering knowing that I was looking at this particular flight number for some of my trips.
Anyways, my thoughts are with the families and the employees dealing with this horrible tragedy. Knowing that I met some of them just last weekend makes it a bit harder to wrap my head around.
Posted by Seth on February 11, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Actually, I don’t really bemoan change fees too much. I understand (as much as any mere mortal can understand the vagaries of airline Revenue Management) the reasoning behind them and I generally support the airlines in charging them. Essentially those fees keep the cheap flights cheap, and I don’t have changes too often, so I benefit from the arrangement.
But every now and then I start to wonder about them just a little bit. And there are clearly a couple things that the airlines are doing wrong on this front that are truly annoying. The WSJ has an article this week about folks who want to donate their remnant tickets to charities, but the airlines won’t let them. Clearly such a loophole would be ripe for abuse and administratively a pain to operate, but it definitely makes the airlines appear to be essentially heartless scumbags.
Carriers say they won’t make exceptions for charities, and don’t have any mechanism to convert donated tickets to miles, gift cards or airline vouchers that could be transferred to approved charities.
A spokesman for AMR Corp.’s American Airlines said the carrier thinks it’s a great idea, but too complex. "The problem with ticket transfers of any type is the potential for resale of tickets, other types of fraud, and other complex security issues," he said.
Some carriers said they didn’t have the technology to allow donations; others said that even though they charge change fees, the cost of allowing donations is the main hurdle. "Setting up a process to re-handle discount seats would add costs for which we are not compensated in the prices of the ticket," a Continental Airlines Inc. spokeswoman said.
Even Southwest Airlines Co., which doesn’t charge change fees on its nonrefundable tickets, says it won’t allow ticket donations. "The very small percentage who might take advantage of a program does not support the expenses of developing or maintaining such a program," a Southwest spokesman said.
OK, fine. Heartless scumbags. Whatever.
Then I came up against an issue last week that makes even less sense and I’m still annoyed about having to deal with it. I made a mistake buying a ticket. It happens. I didn’t notice the error until it was well outside of the 24-hour window where such things can often be resolved easily. So I called Delta to ask about changing the flight. Prior to calling I checked and the new one-way ticket that I want to buy is only $134. Delta’s answer to me when I asked – $195 for the change. That’s right folks, the change fee is more expensive than the actual cost of the ticket. This is not the first time I’ve had such an experience and I’m sure that it won’t be the last, but it definitely makes me wonder what they are thinking with pricing policies like that. I will either buy the new tickets outright or buy on a different carrier (which I’m inclined to do now because of this idiocy).
On the plus side, at least one carrier realizes that such a change fee policy is moronic. JetBlue dropped their change fee on their cheapest tickets to keep them below the actual value of the ticket. A small glimmer of hope in the insanity that is airline revenue management.
Posted by Seth on February 10, 2009 under Uncategorized |
When NetJets started seeing increasing service to Europe recently, they realized that there were just some airports that were not so accessible. Frankfurt was a big problem for them, and they have a lot of customers who want to go there. So they just bought an airport in the Frankfurt area, Eglesbach. The airport is a tiny private field, with the longest runway of only 4600 feet, so it isn’t going to be pulling in lots of big planes anytime soon, but it is only ~10 miles or so from Frankfurt-Main (FRA), so it is really rather convenient for their customers.
“When our customers want to go there, we have a success rate of perhaps 30-40 percent of getting access to Frankfurt,” forcing NetJets to fly to Frankfurt-Hahn airport about 100 kilometers to the west, Kelly said. The Egelsbach purchase will allow better connections to the city of Frankfurt, which is home to “lots of high-net-worth individuals,” he said. The transaction is a “huge opportunity to grow our German market.”
Egelsbach airport doesn’t serve scheduled airlines. Its vendors had to invest about 500,000 euros last year to keep the unprofitable operation in business.
“We don’t expect to be profitable at the airport until 2015- 2016,” Kelly said. Making the airport profitable “is not our No. 1 priority,” as the main goal is to “get more customers into NetJets.”
The economics seem pretty insane to me, but I guess they make sense to someone. And Warren Buffett is generally not a moron financially, so I guess it is a good deal for them.
Posted by Seth on February 9, 2009 under Uncategorized |
When I read the news about the change this morning I honestly thought, “It is about time!”
American Airlines has implemented a system – nicknamed “Remember Me” – on their call center software that now allows it to recognize callers based on their Caller ID information rather than requiring them to input an account number and PIN. When a customer calls in they will have direct access to their current reservations, gate and departure status. They expect to realize significant time savings for those users.
With “Remember Me”, customers can dramatically reduce the time it takes to get relevant information. The system recognizes customers’ phone numbers, instantaneously pulls up their reservations, and even greets customers by name. For example, if a customer calls American and is traveling that day, the new enhanced system proactively offers gate and flight information, all in about 25 seconds – less than one-fourth the time it takes those who are not registered for this time-saving service.
This is one of those things that has had the technology available for a long time but that very few companies have been willing to implement thus far. I can understand why to some extent, as there is a security risk associated with the technology, but it still seems like quite a good option to make available to folks who want such a feature.
The security risk comes from the fact that spoofing Caller ID information is actually pretty trivial, so there isn’t much to prevent me from setting up a phone system to call out with someone else’s number as the Caller ID. But since they aren’t allowing real transactions based on this information, just basic flight status information, I don’t really think it is a huge deal.
I’m also pretty happy with AA because they gave me back almost 25,000 miles that they had expired out of my account. Back in October I had a partner activity that was supposed to extend the life of those miles but it didn’t post to my account until mid-December. Over the intervening time the miles went AWOL. I was probably going to just let them go as I don’t really need them and didn’t want to struggle with the phone calls and hassle of recovering such a trivial amount of miles, but when I logged in to my account today to set up the new Remember Me service I saw that the miles were back in my account. Sweet!
Update: A quick update on this. I enrolled and it actually is pretty slick. They also have the option to use your ZIP code as a security measure for folks that want to. Not sure that it really matters, but the option is there.
Posted by Seth on February 8, 2009 under Trip Reports |
Well, the weekend of partying with the folks at Continental has finally ended. I’m on a plane now on my last flight, from Austin to Newark, and the shift from indulgence and celebration to work. Yeah, that’s a buzz kill. But the good news is that the high I’m on is pretty ridiculous. The weekend was absolutely amazing from start to finish.
As I mentioned on Saturday, we got a tour of Texas on one of Continental’s 757-200 planes, with Vice Presidents and Managers working as flight attendants on the trip, serving up a bit of bubbly and shmoozing with the group. They had a good time, as did all the passengers/customers on the flight. All in all, a phenomenal event.
And then there was the party on Saturday night. An airplane hanger is ridiculously big. But when you move the planes out and bring in a catering crew, some tables and chairs, a live jazz band and set up a couple of stages for entertainment, it gets pretty cozy in a hurry. And last night was just that. When I wasn’t busy making new friends I was hanging out with old ones or enjoying the entertainment. Certainly one of the highlights was when the CEO of the company took the stage to play MC for the final round of a competition giving away 1,000,000 OnePass mile. That was pretty ridiculous, and the competition was actually intense, coming down to the very last question to decide the winner.
Oh, and there was the 737-900ER plane that they had available for us to visit. We pretty much had free reign, which may or may not have been a mistake on their part, but it certainly was fun. Many folks got to take photos in the cockpit, sitting in the engine or even in the overhead bins!
While the Friday night, Saturday morning and Saturday night parts of the event were all fun and games, there were also some serious bits to the event. The Saturday afternoon sessions gave the 500+ attendees a chance to interact directly with the managers of the various departments in the company. Have a question about the OnePass program, the web site, the in-flight catering or hub operations? They had the people on-site to answer those questions for you. Some of the sessions were better than others, as is always the case, but we certainly learned a few new things that were quite good to know. Some highlights include:
- One little nugget about the Star Alliance move. Continental Gold elites will be Star Gold. This has a significant impact on checked luggage allowances and international lounge access. In the case of the latter it is a significant improvement for gold elites.
An update on the plans to roll out LiveTV and in-flight Internet on the domestic fleet. The system is a bit delayed, but they were supposed to see “power on” of the system over the weekend. They expect it to start in commercial service by March 15 and to have all 220+ of their planes retrofit by mid-2010. The bad news is that the internet part of the service is not going to be coming at the same time. That service is expected to come online much later in the year, and that sucks. I was really looking forward to that. It was also mentioned that the in-flight internet as part of the LiveTV implementation is not necessarily the only option available. The current contract allows CO to put an additional internet service on the planes if they want to. So if something like Row44 or Aircell’s gogo service really takes off then they can always do that too. Oh, and they had a set of the seats on display during Saturday night’s session so we got to see what the system will look like. I am VERY impressed with it, though I still don’t really expect that I’ll spend much time watching TV on flights. 
There is a schedule for the deployment of the new business class seats (and we got to try them out). They are a full lie-flat seat and they are pretty nice. No, they are not perfect if you are 6’ 5”, and getting out over your neighbor from the window seat will remain an acrobatic event, but overall they are a great improvement, I think. I only spent a couple minutes in the seat, but it was comfortable both fully reclined and in the “lounge” mode. And the TV screens they have are just awesome. And they aren’t as good as the Singapore Air suites for getting two people into at the same time, but a couple folks proved that it could be done on the demo set that was set up, though it didn’t look particularly comfortable. As to the deployment schedule, they will start with the 777-200s in September 2009 and the 757-200s in December 2009. Each fleet type is expected to take about 14 months to complete. Yes, that is a long time, but it is better than them not upgrading the offering at all, and considering that even with recent cuts Continental is running their international fleet pretty much at full capacity, it isn’t particularly viable for them to do it any faster. The older 767-400s will start getting the new seats at some point in 2010 (and will likely be getting the AVOD at all seats at the same time) and the 787s will be delivered with the new seats already installed.- Speaking of the 787s, there is a date on the horizon for their delivery: Q2 2011. Yes, it really is that far away. They are running a full two years late from Boeing, which sucks. But then will be now soon enough, I suppose.
- Also on the lounge front, there was some further discussion on the reciprocal relationship between Continental and United that has started to roll out. It seems that we’re stalled a bit for now, but eventually they do expect that the relationship will be fully realized. There are apparently a lot of legal ramifications because of the existing SkyTeam relationship that have to be carefully navigated. In other words, don’t hold your breath on this unless you can survive without breathing until the end of October.
New gate display systems are coming. I had a private head’s up on this one but was sworn to secrecy until Saturday night when the system was finally on display. Continental is beginning the deployment of LCD TV gate display systems similar to the ones that Delta has at their gates. These systems show things like seat maps, in-flight entertainment and meal details and, most importantly to many, upgrade waitlist status. They also show a lot of ads if the demo we saw at the event is to be believed. The information is all the same stuff that has been available for almost a year now for folks with PDAs or other mobile devices that are connected online. And they rolled out the same information on the regular website just a couple months ago. When the gate displays go live I believe that Continental will be unrivaled in terms of transparency and access to the information that they are giving to their customers about the flights.
There were lots of other things that we did and talked about, but those are the biggest ones I can think of off the top of my head.
I want to again offer my public thanks to all the folks at Continental who work so hard at putting together these events. The events are equally as amazing as the folks who plan them. One last picture with me and a couple of the guys who work so hard on this stuff, Kerwin on the left and Scott on the right.
Tags: Boeing, Continental, Dreamliner, frequent flyer, IFE, internet, Lounge, Photos, points, Singapore Air, SkyTeam, United
Posted by Seth on February 7, 2009 under Trip Reports |
I’m not posting really too much this weekend even though I’m on the road and travelling. That’s because I’m at the big Continental event and posting on a different blog just for that. We’re all having a great time – truly amazing. I got off a private 757-200 tour of lower Texas just about an hour ago, with the champagne flowing (there are pictures of me drinking from the bottle but I haven’t seen them yet) and everyone having a phenomenal time. No miles that I know of since we landed at the same airport we departed from, but plenty of fun during the hour and change in the air, so no complaints here.
You can follow along for the rest of this weekend’s events at www.continentaldo.com. Enjoy!
I got to wear the cool hat.
Our flight path.
Me and a couple of the “most professional men and women in the business.” Chavon is the one on the right. She was the star of the safety video for quite some time. I now have a special place in history because of this photo!
