Sometimes, even when everything goes wrong, everything goes right.
At about 5:30 p.m. the other day, when my mobile phone rang. “Mr. Zollman? This is US Airways. Your flight out of Washington National to Philadelphia (at 8:10 p.m.) is delayed, and you may miss your connection to Louisville. Can we work on alternate arrangements?”
Wow! Customer service! That’s the way it’s supposed to work. But it usually doesn’t.
They had an earlier non-stop, straight to my final destination of Louisville. But it was oversold. So the representative promised to put me on standby. And I promised to try to get to the airport early. Unfortunately, when I did, the Louisville flight was indeed full.
So the great desk agent explained my options: “You can go to Philadelphia and risk missing the connecting flight. And we’ll put you up there, but you won’t get in until mid-day tomorrow. Or we’ll put you up here overnight, because a mechanical problem caused the delay, and get you on a non-stop to Louisville early tomorrow morning.”
Perfect. Now I have information. I have options. I’m being taken care of. Good for US Airways (and the excellent gate agent at the desk). I stayed overnight, flew out the next morning and I was happy. Handling a bad situation exactly as it should be handled. That’s customer service.
Way back when, I was a “Chairman’s Club” member at U.S. Air because I flew it so often. Then its customer service fell apart and I put it on my “avoid whenever possible” list. This incident went a long way toward convincing me to put it on my “I’ll fly them again” list.
* * * *
A postscript: I showed up at the Louisville airport for my return flight home, and asked if I could exchange my one window seat, which was in an uncomfortable location, for another one.
Mind you, I already had a window seat; I just wanted a different one.
Neither of the two ticket counter reps could figure out how to swap one window seat for another without charging me a $15 upgrade fee.
Excuse me? How about I charge you a $15 “downgrade” fee, you charge me the upgrade fee, and we call it even? Or you just exchange one seat for another?
“No, we can’t do that. It’s $15 if you want a window seat. Even if you already have one.”
Ugh! Maybe they belong on the no-fly list after all!
