Virgin Atlantic Sucks (Part 4 of 4)

Today brought some good news from Virgin Atlantic. Apparently, they found my girlfriend's luggage and would deliver it. Can't complain too much about that. Unfortunately the suitcase just showed up now at 6:30 PM. I say unfortunately because she left on another flight to see visit her parents for the Fourth of July week at 4 PM.

I have to say, 48 hours to return a lost bag is not the worst record in the world, but that does not excuse the customer service that my girlfriend received over the last couple days. It's nice that they found the suitcase and returned it, but it would have been a lot nicer if they could have pretended to care about the inconvenience it caused.

Virgin Atlantic could have done some small things to make this experience a lot better. For example, offer some sort of parking voucher or pass so that I didn't have to pay an extra $8 for the hour and a half that I had to wait around in vain.

• Or offer $25 towards some clean clothes. Something that shows that this is not business as usual for your company.

• Or have some people on the phone that don't lie through their teeth to customers (my girlfriend was promised four different times that she would receive a call back within the hour - it NEVER once happened).

• How about having a manager on staff? Once the call center person actually said "Well, this call center is based in India and it's 3 AM here, so we don't have a manager." Locating your call center in India is a business decision you made, it shouldn't effect the level of service we receive. What are we supposed to do, wait until 1 AM on the east coast to call India to try to catch a manager?

• Hire more call center employees! I don't care where they are located, so long as I never hear the words "We are experiencing an abnormally high call volume." Bullshit. I'm going to just call bullshit on that recording. Call volume can't be abnormally high all the time, that's just normal call volume and you're hoping that we'll hang up and use your worthless website instead.

Overall, I'm just tired of companies trying to avoid actually interacting with their customers or meeting the needs of their customers. Especially airlines. It's as if they have completely forgotten that we are contracting a service from them, the transportation of a person and a some baggage from one point to another. If they fail to live up to their side of the contract of course we're going to be pissed.

In a world where FedEx can deliver a package to any address in the country on the next day and give me real-time tracking updates, how is it at all acceptable that airlines can completely lose a bag for 24 hours or more? We have bar codes and hand held scanners, why isn't there a system of scanning bags every time they move from one place to another?

All the things I've suggested are not incredibly difficult to implement. However, I doubt we see anything like that any time soon. As long as companies can look around the industry and say "we're not really that much worse than everyone else," there is little impetus for change. It takes guts to do your job well, to do it better than everyone else, and I don't see any airlines demonstrating that kind of will to excel. They're too busy trying to cut another inch out of the legroom in coach.

Virgin Atlantic Sucks (part 3 of ?)

As we've been told countless times by automated messages and unhelpful people that emailing this address is the fastest way to get a response. To quote the email above: "We'll write back as soon as we can, within the next 21 days."

Does this sound like an acceptable level of customer service?

When will companies learn that automated replies are more frustrating than anything? This is why I hate emailing companies, it's much easier to ignore email than a phone call.

Virgin Atlantic Sucks (part 2 of ?)

Believe it or not, no one from Virgin Atlantic called back! My girlfriend tried their baggage help number again. Once again, the person on the other end can not help her find her reference number and recommends that she send an email to customer.relations.us@fly.virgin.com.

Like I said, every step of the way it's just been "I can't help you, try this phone number instead." The people on the phone say try the internet. The website lists a phone number. Is anyone at that company able to do anything for customers?

Virgin Atlantic Sucks

My girlfriend arrived at IAD yesterday from CDG via London-Heathrow. So before she even got to Dulles customs she was pissed at Virgin Atlantic. Why? They have a one carry-on only policy, but didn't tell her this in Paris. So she arrived at Heathrow with two carry-ons. Virgin Atlantic would not even let her into the transfer area with two carry-ons (apparently they've never heard of "gate-check"). So she had to go through British customs to check one of her carry-ons.

When she arrives at Dulles, one of her checked bags never shows up. Dulles customs sucks bad enough without losing your bag. Believe it or not, this is just the beginning of how terrible Virgin Atlantic is at customer service. So she fills out the lost bag form and goes through customs.

Now, they give her an phone number for baggage services (1-800-880-6253), who of course say "It's too early to know where your bag is, give us until tomorrow." She asked to be transferred to the customer service department and is told that the Virgin Atlantic customer service department doesn't have a phone number!

She's still mad, so she wants to talk to a customer service agent. However, the Virgin Atlantic baggage office is closed and locked. We waited there for half an hour, then went upstairs to the ticket counter.

The woman at the ticket counter is entirely unhelpful. She keeps repeating that it's too early to search for her bag. No shit! We want to know if you are going to give her a couple dollars to buy some underwear and a clean T-shirt. My girlfriend remains remarkably calm in the face of such ridiculous service and asks if we can speak to a manager. We are speaking to the ticket counter manager.
-Where is the baggage manager?
-At the gate for the next departure.
-When will he or she be back?
-Probably about 8 PM (this is at 6 PM).
-Is there anyone else we can talk to?
-Try this pamphlet with phone numbers.

So I immediately dial the "Virgin Atlantic Customer Relations (US)" phone number (1-800-496-6661). You should dial it, it's an amazing exercise in futility. It takes you to a recording that tells you that "the fastest way to get a response is to use email at customer.relations.us@fly.virgin.com" After that it tells you that you can mail them at Virgin Atlantic Airways 501 W. Fort Ave. PM Box 331 Norwalk, CT 06851 or fax them at 866-258-0951. Then it asks if you would like to repeat the message. If you don't repeat the message, it hangs up. It is literally impossible to speak to a live person who works for Virgin Atlantic customer service.

I try to explain this to the manager at the ticket counter. She says, I'm not kidding, "Are you sure? There's a lot of numbers on that sheet." My other choices are all international phone numbers.

So eventually we give up and leave the airport. Today it gets even better. My girlfriend tries to log onto their website to check on her bag. It asks for a 10 digit file number. She has no such thing. She's got a bag tag number (a British Airways tag at that, because the flight from London to Dulles was actually BA) and a Virgin Atlantic Property Irregularity Report number (6 digits).

She calls them twice more, each time the person asks for the file reference number and can't help her without it. So she tried explaining to them that she doesn't have one and could they please give her that number so she can check online and stop calling? The guy says that he'll call her back in an hour. That was at 10:35 AM. As I type this, it's 11:05 AM.

Given everything above, what is the likelihood that Virgin Atlantic will call back? They've got 30 minutes.

Moral of the story - Don't fly Virgin Atlantic, they could honestly care less about customer service.

Challenge to Virgin Atlantic - If you as a company ever discover this post and feel that it does not properly represent how you "put customer service and commitment to our passengers at the heart of what [you] do,"* then you should:

1. Create a comment on this post to justify why on earth a company that cares at all about it customers would have a customer service department that can never be reached by phone.
2. Admit and apologize for the behavior of your company. At every step of the process anyone that we have interacted with has said "Have you tried waiting and then using the internet instead of calling us?" Here's a hint for all companies - that's the worst possible thing to say to someone who's just been on hold for five minutes!

Here's an update - 11:17 AM, still no call back.


* - Source: http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/us/customerrelations/index.jsp

Miracles of Science

I just read an incredible article on the most recent research into the origins of the AIDS virus. Sometimes, I really feel like I'm living in the future. Like when I read that they recreated an extinct virus by finding pieces of the virus that are carried over as junk DNA in different primates, then putting in all together in a new shell that can only replicate once. Seriously, wow!

I have my cake, yes, but I'd like to eat it too

Ah, politics. It's the sort of thing that will allow a man to say nearly anything, regardless of whether or not it's worth hearing. For example, Senator Sam Brownback tries to play both sides of the theory of evolution. In a nationally televised debate, he raises his hand to say he doesn't believe in evolution, thus satisfying a large constituency of religious conservatives. But, just to be clear here, he writes an editorial in the New York Times (where he must feel invisible to the religious wing of the party) where he clarifies his view to show he actuals accepts scientific principles.

Or rather, that he would like to accept scientific principles if it will win him moderate votes. It turns out that Senator Brownback comes from the "I believe in evolution, but I believe that there was a divine hand guiding the development of man" camp. This is a popular place to live, I think a lot of Americans are in this camp. It's a great place for politicians, because basically you're saying nothing. It's certainly does not allow you to call yourself a man of science and reason, because in science you can't just draw a box, write "miracle happens," and then continue on in your process. You're also clearly not a man of faith, or at least, not any mainstream faith. Sure, a number of churches will endorse you as a candidate in the US with that platform, but you're really not a believer in their doctrines. Why say something that means nothing? Because, no one will make fun of you for how dumb you sound if other people sound dumber.

Essentially, The Onion satires Senator Brownback's position perfectly: I believe that random chance could create ridiculously complex organisms, but clearly God had to intervene to make a very small change. The funny thing is, they published their article a day earlier.

I'd love to see a national politician that was actually some sort of real scientist or engineer and willing to take a strong stance for evolution and science in general. Maybe it will even happen in my lifetime.