Again with(out) the customer service

On Monday we flew from White Plains, NY to Atlanta.  The trip was a fiasco but the plane part, the airport part, the customer service part was a complete and utter failure.

I know that there were crazy storms along the east coast and JFK was a virtual wind tunnel with planes getting diverted to other airports, and even other countries.  (Yes, Canada is another country.)  We were lucky to get out on Monday at all.  One flight was waiting for a flight crew that was coming from JFK, in a limo.  Better them than me.  It’s a bit of a miracle that all three of us made it home at all and on the same flight.

White Plains airport is small.  SMALL but small.  That airport was never meant to handle the volume that is going through there.  I’m pretty sure if the fire marshal came through, they’d shut that place down for being so crazy over capacity.  Combine this small airport, bad weather with days of delays and cancellations, and a zillion people and things were ugly.

We boarded the plane and there were way more people than there were seats.  And, of course, those that were in the seats first weren’t budging.  Not one inch.  Someone was in Paul’s seat.  There were 3 people in the seat behind mine.  And I guess there was more of the same in the back.  In the meantime, the gate agents wouldn’t help, some guy that worked baggage was helping people on the plane and the flight attendants were all, “This isn’t our problem.”  And the longer people ignored the problem, the longer we sat there.  The flight attendant said she was going to write a report. Well big deal lady, help people get seats, appologize for the problems, REPRESENT your company but don’t sit there and point fingers at the people who are inside.  It doesn’t really matter who’s fault it was or who’s job it was, YOU are the face we’re looking at, do something.  I get that people are tired and overworked and underpaid but really, you’re just making yourself and your company look bad.

And then yesterday….  I had a couple of repair people coming out to the house.  I’d scheduled them pretty carefully so that I wouldn’t have to spend the entire afternoon sitting on my duff.  I was supposed to have a chimney guy come out at 2.  At 3 I called to find out where he was.  At 4 he showed up.  I would have 100% cancelled the appointment if I had chimney people knocking down my door to come out and do the work.  But with all the rain we’d been having, the chimney people are busy, apparently.  While the guy was super nice and quite efficient (although his side kick couldn’t have been a minute over 15 and probably breaking some child labor law), not a peep to apologize for being 2 hours late.  For keeping me waiting.  But that’s ok dude, let me write you a check for some obscene amount of money.  And if it rains in my house tomorrow, I’m totally cancelling the check.

Anyway, all this to say that customer service is totally dead.  DEAD.  Not an apology, not a soul out there seemingly trying to do the right thing, lots of finger pointing and “not my jobs.”  I’m not perfect and I’m quite sure I have my moments where I’m a total beyotch and have been when working customer service but at least TRY people.  Just try!!