Those of you who are interested in honey lamb's meanderings (both written and actual) will be aware of a severely delayed flight on Aer Lingus which deposited us at LHR at 3:15am after a diversion to LTN. I had been booked into the LHR Hilton and obviously at that hour of the morning I had to take a taxi. I have to say before I go on that EI treated us well as long as we were in their bailiwick but one delay compounded another so that I had to take a taxi from T1 to the Hilton at T4 which relieved me of 25. Fortunately I always carry sterling even when transiting through LHR for emergencies.
On my return I wrote to Aer Lingus Customer Service what I considered a balanced letter (in other words I wasn't baying for blood) and requested that as a gesture of goodwill they reimburse the 25 taxi fare. About 3 weeks later I received a boilerplate letter which included one line that made me laugh 'Please be kind enough to allow us some time to complete our investigations thoroughly' I mean, how long is it going to take them to establish that the plane was very late and diverted to LTN? [?] A couple of keystrokes on a computer, methinks! Anyhow I settled down and waited.....and waited......and waited......and waited...... Some of the time I forgot all about it but then I would come across the taxi receipt. The alarming thing about that was that the printing, never great in the first place was fading at an alarming rate. [:0]
A couple of months later I decided enough was enough but the number on the letterhead, when dialled, got me to the 'For bookings, press #1....' menu, none of which was the customer service department. I poked around the website and came up with a 'Contact us' link and spilled out my woes at hearing nothing. Within minutes a response came bouncing back, acknowledging receipt and stating it had been forwarded to the agent who had written to me. So I settled down and waited.....and waited......and waited......and waited...... and still nothing came. Back to the letterhead and once more I dialled the number this time holding on till someone answered. I asked to be put through to Customer Services only to be told that the Aer Lingus switchboard at Dublin Airport did not have a number for them!!!
At this stage I decided it was time to bring in the big guns and a letter was composed to Dermot Mannion but the timing was crucial. I did not want to send it when there was a threat of industrial action because of restructuring including outsourcing (sounds familiar?) as it would be buried and then Christmas was upon us. Interestingly about that time in the travel section of the Irish Times someone had a complaint which eventually had been settled thanks to their intervention but one of the facets of the case had been the impossibility of contacting customer service. That complaint had serious monetary implications for the complainant but at this stage, for me was the issue that they had ignored my original letter and probably made paper darts with it!!
So, at the beginning of the year one of my resolutions was to follow it up as a point of principle but it had to form an orderly queue behind all the other things I needed to follow up. However this morning it was going to be D-Day. The letter was to be sent! Then the post came and with it a letter from Aer Lingus, apologising for the delay and promising to reimburse the money on production of the receipt. the letter was dated exactly 6 months to the day that I had landed in LHR at 3:15am. [V]
Oh and the ink on the receipt is so faded I hope they can read it [:0]
On my return I wrote to Aer Lingus Customer Service what I considered a balanced letter (in other words I wasn't baying for blood) and requested that as a gesture of goodwill they reimburse the 25 taxi fare. About 3 weeks later I received a boilerplate letter which included one line that made me laugh 'Please be kind enough to allow us some time to complete our investigations thoroughly' I mean, how long is it going to take them to establish that the plane was very late and diverted to LTN? [?] A couple of keystrokes on a computer, methinks! Anyhow I settled down and waited.....and waited......and waited......and waited...... Some of the time I forgot all about it but then I would come across the taxi receipt. The alarming thing about that was that the printing, never great in the first place was fading at an alarming rate. [:0]
A couple of months later I decided enough was enough but the number on the letterhead, when dialled, got me to the 'For bookings, press #1....' menu, none of which was the customer service department. I poked around the website and came up with a 'Contact us' link and spilled out my woes at hearing nothing. Within minutes a response came bouncing back, acknowledging receipt and stating it had been forwarded to the agent who had written to me. So I settled down and waited.....and waited......and waited......and waited...... and still nothing came. Back to the letterhead and once more I dialled the number this time holding on till someone answered. I asked to be put through to Customer Services only to be told that the Aer Lingus switchboard at Dublin Airport did not have a number for them!!!
At this stage I decided it was time to bring in the big guns and a letter was composed to Dermot Mannion but the timing was crucial. I did not want to send it when there was a threat of industrial action because of restructuring including outsourcing (sounds familiar?) as it would be buried and then Christmas was upon us. Interestingly about that time in the travel section of the Irish Times someone had a complaint which eventually had been settled thanks to their intervention but one of the facets of the case had been the impossibility of contacting customer service. That complaint had serious monetary implications for the complainant but at this stage, for me was the issue that they had ignored my original letter and probably made paper darts with it!!
So, at the beginning of the year one of my resolutions was to follow it up as a point of principle but it had to form an orderly queue behind all the other things I needed to follow up. However this morning it was going to be D-Day. The letter was to be sent! Then the post came and with it a letter from Aer Lingus, apologising for the delay and promising to reimburse the money on production of the receipt. the letter was dated exactly 6 months to the day that I had landed in LHR at 3:15am. [V]
Oh and the ink on the receipt is so faded I hope they can read it [:0]
