About three months ago, Katmandu sounded like a good place to go, and
it was on my bucket list. I thought I’d take advantage of a three-day weekend
next month, add a day and cross another item off.
The list is dwindling, and I really do want to go. But the
earthquake sort of deterred that, and when the airline changed my flight
drastically, I decided to cancel it. I’d arranged to leave on a Friday morning,
and the airline changed it to leave on Saturday night. And that just didn’t jive with my time off.
So I called to try to cancel. This was on a Friday, a
holiday here, and the Expedia guy, who was really nice but kept parroting my
words back to me (“I understand that you cannot make your flight on 6/19”) made
it sound like it would be no problem to do since it was an “involuntary
change,” but couldn’t do anything until the airline’s offices were open and
they had to call them.
The next morning, thinking the office would be open, I
called again and got a different, nice parroting person who said the same
thing. Ditto for two calls the rest of that weekend until I thought to ask when
the airline was open. Turns out the office, which is a U.S. office of
a Chinese airline, is closed on weekends. So I called back on Tuesday, when I
was pretty sure it would be open.
And keep in mind that I do not have a phone. I do this from
Skype, which for me is attached to my computer. The Expedia calls go through an
automated “let me look up the number from which you are calling,” which
invariably turns into “I cannot find that number. Using your keypad…” There is no
option to hit “O” for an operator or anything. I just have to sit there and
wait for it to cycle through to get to a point where a person might come on the
line.
And sometimes at that point, I find out that I have a bad
Skype connection and the person can’t hear me. On that day, I wound up trying
from home 3-4 times, going through that “enter your phone number” crap and
finally getting to a real person before finding out that the person couldn’t
hear me.
So that day, I called about four times, trying to get
someone who could hear me. Didn’t work. I finally cashed in my chips and went
to call from work. That was call No. 9, and it was pretty miserable. The
eventual gist of it was that someone would get on the problem, but they would
have to email the airline and not call them. I was like, if that’s what you
were going to do, how come you couldn’t do it after my first phone call?
And that’s when I’d experience the bad customer service,
except that it’s good. That sounds wishy-washy, I know, but you’re talking to
these people – clearly not U.S. nationals – and they are being so polite, but
they’re not hearing what you’re saying, and definitely not paying attention,
even though they are repeating it. And that part was incredibly frustrating,
because I don’t need it repeated. I know what the problem is Making me stay on
the line and listen to you go over and over it isn’t solving the problem.
Anyway, they were going to send an email on May 5. On or
about May 13, I called back. I asked if there was any progress and got an “oh,
we sent an email to the airline.” When I pointed out that it was over a week
later and perhaps something might be wrong, they just parroted back my words
again. “I understand that you are frustrated about the change in your flight…”
AARGH.
So in all, they somewhat agreed that they would email again.
Then, during the course of my day, I wound up working late so I decided to call
the airline myself, since it was in China.
It wasn’t an overly happy phone call, so the next morning, I
called the U.S. office of the airline and learned from a genuinely friendly
operator who told me the email address Expedia used was not monitored and that
they must call.
I thanked the person and hung up and called Expedia again. It
took about five minutes to get to a supervisor (learned from experience I had
to do this) and then, in the first
five minutes,
reported that I had just spoken to the airline and that the email address
wasn’t monitored and Expedia had to call and gave them the number, and that the
airline was open NOW.
Forty minutes after that, I was still on the phone. My head
was about to explode. The operator, like the others, kept putting me on hold
randomly I never knew what they were doing or how long they’d take. When the
person came back, I was like, um, why is this taking so long? Can you just
call?
And more “sympathy training.” Please. The “sympathy”
training is brutal, too. Parroting my own words back to me doesn’t mean you’re
listening. You’ve proven that by saying, “I understand you talked to the
airline and the airline said I should call them to cancel your ticket. I will
now email the airline and ask them to cancel the ticket.”
I’m not sure where these places learn their customer service
lessons , but after several calls, it gets tiring to hear them say, “I
understand that you are frustrated because your flight on June 19 has been
canceled. Let me summarize the problem.” It’s like, please, don’t summarize it
again, please solve it. I just told you what the airline said for you to do;
please don’t tell me for the 76th time what happened. I’m clear on that,
thanks. Just please call them and fix it.
It was just horrible. The person would not do what I asked
them to do. Eventually – the call lasted 50 minutes total – she said she was
going to call (she said she’d “decided to call them.” I wanted to scream.) She
put me on hold again, where I sat for a long time and then I just had to go
because I was late to work. I’d been pulling the Skype headphones out of the
computer and running to the kitchen, etc., trying to do morning stuff. I mean,
seriously, I thought that phone call would last 15 minutes. All that was
required was for them to get the message to call instead of email and then do
it. I mean, the airline was open right then, so it should have been done.
So at lunch, I called again. I honestly thought the operator
had fixed the problem because she said she would. But after being on forever, I
came to light that she hadn’t.
It was so frustrating. Again, they’re as nice as they can be
on the surface, but they don’t do anything. I just finally cut them off. She’d
try to summarize it and I was just like, “Look, I don’t have time for this. I
know the problem, I need the solution. I’ve told you what to do, so will you do
it?” I swear I wasn’t rude, but I’d just had it.
And she tried. God as my witness, she came back and said she
tried to call the airline then, but that it was closed. Ballistic, I was. I
repeated that I had told the other operator that in the morning and had she
simply done what I’d asked, it would have been done because the airline was
open then – and I’d told them that.
She swore me she was going to do it and I started naming
names. I said, “Look, Rona, I want to believe you, but that’s what Adrian told me this
morning, and she didn’t do it. I was on the phone for 50 minutes with Adrian and in the first
10, I gave her the solution to the problem. After 50 minutes, she said she was
going to fix it, but she didn’t. I want to believe you Rona, but Adrian didn’t do what she
said she was going to do. Will you?”
And I think she did, so thank you, Rona. I now have an email
saying my flight’s been canceled but a note that the refund can take up to 10
weeks. At this point, I’ll take that.
Now I have a blank weekend. No idea yet. I might wind up
canceling the spare day off and going to Hong Kong.
This past weekend, I went on a furniture trip and bought a
little table. It’s made out of reclaimed ship wood. I’d seen it last year when
I went (but didn’t buy anything) and snagged it this year. I love it. Right
now, it’s in the closest because I have nowhere to put it, but I love it.
