Bad travel service ahead: 4 warning signs
Mary Day checked into room 315 at a Days Inn recently and requested a wake-up call at 6 a.m. The next morning, her phone rang. She got out of bed and checked out. Then she noticed that it was still dark outside. It turns out she'd received a call at 3:15 a.m.
Klaus Stoll, flying from Frankfurt, Germany, to Quito, Ecuador, discovered that KLM had seated him 10 rows away from his wife. The ticket agent insisted that there were no available seats together, and when he politely handed her his elite-level frequent-flier card and asked her to check again, she became indignant. "I don't understand these cards," she snapped, turning him away.
Isolated cases? If only. The travel industry is often synonymous with substandard customer service, many industry observers agree, for a variety of reasons.
Salaries are low. Starting pay for a flight attendant is about $16,000 annually, and hotel clerks earn about $20,000 a year. Those are not exactly poverty-level incomes (according to the Census Bureau, pay would have to drop below $9,214 a year for that to be true), but it's difficult to motivate a workforce that's so thinly compensated. And then there's low morale: Given the recent airline bankruptcies, it is now very low, indeed.
__________________________________________________________________
Should we just stay home?
In my role as National Geographic Traveler magazine's ombudsman, it's my job to help readers not only solve their travel problems, but also to prevent these awful trips from ever happening again.
The first part is usually easy: Fixing a trip is a matter of contacting the airline, hotel or car rental agency and asking it to address the grievance. The hard part is helping travelers stay out of trouble the next time. Bad customer service, which leads to most of the complaints I hear, is so widespread that the only certain way of preventing it is to stay home. But business travelers can't afford that luxury.
Here, then, are my four strategies for avoiding bad customer service:
The oblivious travel agent. Sharon Berman usually handles her own travel arrangements. But she decided to ask a friend's mother, who is a travel agent, to help her plan a recent trip to Europe. Big mistake. The agent made reservations without first checking with her, booking tickets that were both too expensive and inconvenient. When she called the agency to change her itinerary, she was transferred to the owner, who "proceeded to go psycho on me," Berman remembers. In the end, she flew on a flight she didn't want, sat in a seat she didn't ask for, didn't get her requested meal and landed vowing to think twice before using a travel agent again.
How to get around the problem: I receive a lot of complaints similar to Berman's about poor service by travel agents, and I often side with both the traveler and the agent. If you're using an agent for a simple point-to-point itinerary, you're wasting your time and asking for trouble. Agents no longer receive a commission from airlines, so they grudgingly book your ticket while trying to steer you to a hotel that offers a decent bonus for them. Next time, buy the flight online.
The inattentive flight attendant. Lois Schwartz scored an upgrade to first class on a Delta Air Lines flight from Madrid to Atlanta. She'd purchased an expensive leather jacket in Spain, which a flight attendant offered to hang in the coat rack for her. After landing, the crew member handed it back to the wrong passenger — who apparently wanted to keep it. "I told the flight attendant that it was my coat and not [the other passenger's]," Schwartz recalls. "But she argued with me, never bothering to ask the passenger if that was actually his coat." After something of a standoff, Schwartz asked the pilot to intervene. The pilot did, and the coat was returned to Schwartz.
How to get around the problem: Sadly, the inattentive-flight-attendant story is all too common. Veteran frequent travelers can spot ill-trained crew members from far away: They're the ones who either aren't wearing name tags or who have them turned upside down so you can't read them. Basically, when a flight attendant gives you grief, you can expect the other crew members to support the attendant, no matter how out of line he or she is. You have to take your case to the pilot, and if that doesn't work, to a manager on the ground. If you aren't getting what you want, chances are you're asking the wrong person.
The cruel hotel clerk. "When I arrived at Ramada Inn Hollywood Beach, the hotel had my reservation. But when I was presented the room rate, it was $90 more than the rate I had confirmed," recalls Matt Turner. The cruel clerk didn't just refuse to honor the price he'd been offered on the Ramada Web site, she also wouldn't let him talk with a manager and promptly called security. He left the hotel and found a better room at a nearby Days Inn. "I've never had such a terrible experience while traveling," he says.
How to get around the problem: Just as you would look for a troublesome flight attendant (remember the missing or inverted name tag?), the experienced traveler knows how to spot a difficult hotel clerk. Watch how the employee interacts with others while you're standing in line. Does she make eye contact? Are his answers short? Does she appear impatient? Those are all telltale signs of a problem encounter in the making. Move into a different line if you can. Or just leave and check in later.
The out-of-control car rental agent. Jeff Weiner told a National rental agent that he'd bring back his rental car to Orlando International Airport with a full tank of gas. But the attendant thought he said "empty" and charged him for a full tank. So Weiner stood in a long line to clear up the misunderstanding. End of story? Nope. "When I got to the counter, the manager asked me how far I had driven since I filled the car up," he recalls. "I told her. She proceeded to chastise me, saying that I must have driven at least 30 miles from my hotel to the airport and that I still had to pay because the tank could not possibly be full." Never mind that the return agent indicated a full tank of gas on the invoice. The charges were later reversed after Weiner contacted the corporate office. But the car rental employee's actions had more serious consequences. Weiner complained to his employer, and the company eventually dumped National as its preferred car rental supplier.
How to get around the problem: Use the same techniques as you would to spot a difficult airline crew member or hotel employee. Appealing your case to a higher-up can help, but with managers' feet being held to the proverbial fire on profit goals nowadays, don't expect much. Looking back, Weiner should have gone directly to the corporate office and if that didn't work, appealed the charges on his credit card.
The travel industry is full of odd contrasts. It's a place where you can encounter abysmal customer service on one trip and excellent customer service the next one. Dealing with people who do their job well is easy: You tip them, you thank them, you tell your friends about them.
Good travel service does exist (see this article), and there are many in the industry who perform their jobs incredibly well. Unfortunately, too many others don't, which is why we need strategies like those above.
Mary Day checked into room 315 at a Days Inn recently and requested a wake-up call at 6 a.m. The next morning, her phone rang. She got out of bed and checked out. Then she noticed that it was still dark outside. It turns out she'd received a call at 3:15 a.m.
Klaus Stoll, flying from Frankfurt, Germany, to Quito, Ecuador, discovered that KLM had seated him 10 rows away from his wife. The ticket agent insisted that there were no available seats together, and when he politely handed her his elite-level frequent-flier card and asked her to check again, she became indignant. "I don't understand these cards," she snapped, turning him away.
Isolated cases? If only. The travel industry is often synonymous with substandard customer service, many industry observers agree, for a variety of reasons.
Salaries are low. Starting pay for a flight attendant is about $16,000 annually, and hotel clerks earn about $20,000 a year. Those are not exactly poverty-level incomes (according to the Census Bureau, pay would have to drop below $9,214 a year for that to be true), but it's difficult to motivate a workforce that's so thinly compensated. And then there's low morale: Given the recent airline bankruptcies, it is now very low, indeed.
__________________________________________________________________
Should we just stay home?
In my role as National Geographic Traveler magazine's ombudsman, it's my job to help readers not only solve their travel problems, but also to prevent these awful trips from ever happening again.
The first part is usually easy: Fixing a trip is a matter of contacting the airline, hotel or car rental agency and asking it to address the grievance. The hard part is helping travelers stay out of trouble the next time. Bad customer service, which leads to most of the complaints I hear, is so widespread that the only certain way of preventing it is to stay home. But business travelers can't afford that luxury.
Here, then, are my four strategies for avoiding bad customer service:
The oblivious travel agent. Sharon Berman usually handles her own travel arrangements. But she decided to ask a friend's mother, who is a travel agent, to help her plan a recent trip to Europe. Big mistake. The agent made reservations without first checking with her, booking tickets that were both too expensive and inconvenient. When she called the agency to change her itinerary, she was transferred to the owner, who "proceeded to go psycho on me," Berman remembers. In the end, she flew on a flight she didn't want, sat in a seat she didn't ask for, didn't get her requested meal and landed vowing to think twice before using a travel agent again.
How to get around the problem: I receive a lot of complaints similar to Berman's about poor service by travel agents, and I often side with both the traveler and the agent. If you're using an agent for a simple point-to-point itinerary, you're wasting your time and asking for trouble. Agents no longer receive a commission from airlines, so they grudgingly book your ticket while trying to steer you to a hotel that offers a decent bonus for them. Next time, buy the flight online.
The inattentive flight attendant. Lois Schwartz scored an upgrade to first class on a Delta Air Lines flight from Madrid to Atlanta. She'd purchased an expensive leather jacket in Spain, which a flight attendant offered to hang in the coat rack for her. After landing, the crew member handed it back to the wrong passenger — who apparently wanted to keep it. "I told the flight attendant that it was my coat and not [the other passenger's]," Schwartz recalls. "But she argued with me, never bothering to ask the passenger if that was actually his coat." After something of a standoff, Schwartz asked the pilot to intervene. The pilot did, and the coat was returned to Schwartz.
How to get around the problem: Sadly, the inattentive-flight-attendant story is all too common. Veteran frequent travelers can spot ill-trained crew members from far away: They're the ones who either aren't wearing name tags or who have them turned upside down so you can't read them. Basically, when a flight attendant gives you grief, you can expect the other crew members to support the attendant, no matter how out of line he or she is. You have to take your case to the pilot, and if that doesn't work, to a manager on the ground. If you aren't getting what you want, chances are you're asking the wrong person.
The cruel hotel clerk. "When I arrived at Ramada Inn Hollywood Beach, the hotel had my reservation. But when I was presented the room rate, it was $90 more than the rate I had confirmed," recalls Matt Turner. The cruel clerk didn't just refuse to honor the price he'd been offered on the Ramada Web site, she also wouldn't let him talk with a manager and promptly called security. He left the hotel and found a better room at a nearby Days Inn. "I've never had such a terrible experience while traveling," he says.
How to get around the problem: Just as you would look for a troublesome flight attendant (remember the missing or inverted name tag?), the experienced traveler knows how to spot a difficult hotel clerk. Watch how the employee interacts with others while you're standing in line. Does she make eye contact? Are his answers short? Does she appear impatient? Those are all telltale signs of a problem encounter in the making. Move into a different line if you can. Or just leave and check in later.
The out-of-control car rental agent. Jeff Weiner told a National rental agent that he'd bring back his rental car to Orlando International Airport with a full tank of gas. But the attendant thought he said "empty" and charged him for a full tank. So Weiner stood in a long line to clear up the misunderstanding. End of story? Nope. "When I got to the counter, the manager asked me how far I had driven since I filled the car up," he recalls. "I told her. She proceeded to chastise me, saying that I must have driven at least 30 miles from my hotel to the airport and that I still had to pay because the tank could not possibly be full." Never mind that the return agent indicated a full tank of gas on the invoice. The charges were later reversed after Weiner contacted the corporate office. But the car rental employee's actions had more serious consequences. Weiner complained to his employer, and the company eventually dumped National as its preferred car rental supplier.
How to get around the problem: Use the same techniques as you would to spot a difficult airline crew member or hotel employee. Appealing your case to a higher-up can help, but with managers' feet being held to the proverbial fire on profit goals nowadays, don't expect much. Looking back, Weiner should have gone directly to the corporate office and if that didn't work, appealed the charges on his credit card.
The travel industry is full of odd contrasts. It's a place where you can encounter abysmal customer service on one trip and excellent customer service the next one. Dealing with people who do their job well is easy: You tip them, you thank them, you tell your friends about them.
Good travel service does exist (see this article), and there are many in the industry who perform their jobs incredibly well. Unfortunately, too many others don't, which is why we need strategies like those above.
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