We’ve all experienced it.  Airline agents who suck at their job - the ones who have no customer service skills in a customer service industry!  Sometimes it’s worse than going to the Post office.  There should be some rules set forth to protect the customers from the monopolistic airlines, who apparantly believe they can treat their customers like crap and get away with it.   The airlines should be held more accountable for their actions.

The letter below was received by one of our readers yesterday:

Dear SABAsearch Blog,

I am totally horrified by the service I received from US Airways and United airlines last week, and feel that we need to do something about the obligations airlines should have to their paying customers. 

I was returning from a vacation in Puerto Rico and our US airways flight from PR to Philadelphia was delayed due to technical failures.  Therefore, we left late and missed our connecting flight (which was the last one out of philly that night).  They informed us the flight would wait for us, but that didn’t happen.  At that point, i wasn’t too upset as I do understand accidents happen.  However, the next set of events is what really pissed me off!

When we got to Philly, we had to FIGHT with multiple agents to even get vouchers for hotel that night.  They were very unsympathetic and even left us in the middle of our conversation because their “shift ended”.  They handed me the boarding passes of all of the stranded passengers and told me to wait for the next agent.  Unbelievable, not to mention a total violation of airport security to give me all passengers’ boarding passes.

They told us they confirmed us on a United flight first thing in the morning and it turned out they lied!  We were on standby and got booted from the United flight.  When we tried to reason with the United agent to allow us to fly on that flight, we were told “move away from our desk, you are not our customers”.  The agent turned her back to us and pretty much gave us the middle finger.  At that point, we were FURIOUS!  No manager was around to help us.

We finally bought our own southwest tickets to get home.  The airlines are total bullys and didn’t even return our money.  We need to stop this type of behavior somehow.  Customers are considered powerless and most can’t afford to spend the time to fight the airlines.  Please help.

Sincerely,
Airline Bully Victim

Needless to say, the SABAsearch blog staff was also furious when we read this letter.  We do understand that US Airways and United are fighting a high oil cost crisis, but they are being allowed to operate in a way that is unethical and unfair to its customers.  Moreover, the airlines make it extremely difficult for customers to receive fair treatment.  The customers are left at the mercy of the airlines when trying to get home, and the airlines are forced to do nothing to improve their obligations to their customers in this regard. 

In essence, they have forced and encouraged the individual above to take severe forms of action just to rectify the situation.  Is this behavior from the airlines occuring because US airways and/or United is planning to file bankruptcy anyways?  Do they not care at this point to take care of their customers?  If this is the case, then the government should protect paying customers from this type of situation, or we should protect ourselves in some manner.  Or we should intall an organization dedicated to protecting the rights of airline customers, kind of like the EEOC for the skies.  There needs to be more justice in the air.

If the govt or other organizations fail to come and rescue us, how do we protect ourselves and make a statement against these bullying airlines?  Boycott!?  If the South Asian and other communities boycotted United and US Airways, they would definitely feel the holes in their wallets!  But this won’t help if they’re going bankrupt anyways.  Instead,  maybe we should put pressure on the politicians to enforce accountability on the airlines.  Start from the top and work our way down.

The airline bullying needs to STOP!