Jeff

I had an awful experiance with Air France this past week. We had confimed dseats (had been re-confirmed in fact). Upon arriving at DeGaul 2 1/2 hours before departure we were told that our seats had be re-assigned to passangesr from an oversold flight the night before. They offered 250 EUR credit toward a next flight and gaurenteed seats on a connection They would just bump somone on the next flight; ho's that for Lunacy. We said "no" and waited until 5 minutes before departure and they let us have the last two seats on the plane, 30 rows apart! We were the first in line to be bumped yet they boarded 4 others ahead of us until we screamed at them. The audacity was unbeliveable. We were advised "there is no Customer Service department in this Airport". Their HUB!!! No kidding, there is no sense of customer at Air France. We will never fly Air France again. Has anyone else had problems??? (By the way the food out of Boston was horrible....the whole experience was akin to Peoples Express!!!!)

Ira

Hi Jeff,<BR> I realize that you are upset (assuming your not trolling), but when you come to your senses, you might consider that you could have taken the 250E and asked for an upgrade on the next flight.

jeff

I very nicely asked about an upgrade and he rudely said &quot;absolutely not&quot;....they took the position that this was my problem and not their's...the 250 is not worth being tortured by them again. I can get fair enough prices on many other carriers.

Nance

I know what you mean, Jeff. We had a bad experience at degaul too. They dont know the meaning of customer service. Try not to let it bother you, it took us a long time to calm down.

Trish

They did the same thing to my husband and myself when we were flying from CDG in bus.class I must have reconfirmed the flight 5 times and the strange thing was the computer showed my husband still sitting in the seat next to me and they just wouldn't give him the boarding pass until the rest of the flight boarded, I mean what were they waiting for someone better to come along. This was an Air France / Delta code share and my husband is a gold medallion memeber with Delta.

Nance

There is what passes for customer service on the lower level of DeGaul. They gave us another flight when they wouldnt let us on our scheduled one when they held us up in a holding room waiting for a transfer bus that was late. The worse part was that they offered no apology or explanation and refused to answer our questions. I have never seen such rude people as the one's at Air France.

Jacques

I am sure there are two sides to every story. Air France has always been most reputable and generous in my dealings. They are the national airline you know.<BR><BR>Are their other factors we don't know about? What was your attitude? Was your bill paid in full prior to your arrival? How was your attitude/behavior on previous flights? These issues don't happen in a vaccuum and I wonder if the whole story is being told.

Nance

Well, I know my own personal story and both sides of it, so I know I was in the right. We were patient and polite I can assure you. Don't make excuses for the employees you dont know anything about in my case anyway, Jacques.

Going to France

I appreciate you posting your experience with Air France-- this kind of feedback, whether negative or positive, is helpful. It may be anecdotal, but you add up enough anecdotes and you can get a fair idea of what is going on with an airline.<BR><BR>As you have discovered, any post with even a whiff of negativity about anything to do with France inevitably invites bitter responses from the more thin-skinned Francophiles who post here. You get an extra bonus point for braving their wrath to let us know about your experiences.

Nance

Thanks, Going, it is funny I told Jeff to try and get over the experience and then I got riled up thinking again about my own experience.

hanl

I have to agree that Air France's customer services are terrible. I had to travel from Paris to the UK in an emergency, and was quoted the most expensive fare (even though i discovered that cheaper fares were available). Due to the circumstances I paid up, but when I tried to contact the airline to complain that I hadn't been offered the cheaper rate (which I was eligible for), their customer services hotline simply did not reply. Just a message saying please call during our opening hours (which is what I was doing!). I tried calling them 10 times, and wrote to them but received no reply.<BR>And when travelling from the US to Paris after the death of a close family member, the friends who had accompanied me to the airport advised the Air France staff that I was upset and in shock, and asked for them to be &quot;sensitive&quot; to my situation. They were not. Seeing me in tears, the steward rudely told me that if I was too scared to get on the plane, I should stand away from the entrance as I was blocking it for other passengers!<BR><BR>One last complaint - their lacto-ovo vegetarian meals are absolutely vile, consisting of cold rice for the starter and hot rice for the main course, with no dessert and no decent bread or butter (soy margarine and a packet of dried up rye bread). <BR><BR>Unless I absolutely have to, I will never fly Air France again.

Sam Torrence

&quot;National Airline&quot;?! What's that got to do with anything? They're rude and they lie, so if that's how the French operate their national airline, how would you expect them to operate anything else.

BTilke

I don't doubt that all of the dreadful experiences related here are true, but I have to say that Air France has always treated us very well, even when we were flying on free tickets (from Sprint points). The planes were clean, the attendants friendly and helpful.<BR>When our dog flew (in cargo) with us to France in 1997 for an extended stay, we got personal attention from ground personnel at CDG, the head flight attendants, and on the flight back, even the captain himself. <BR>Both Northwest and Air Canada temporarily lost our luggage on flights to Paris. Air France handled the loss report processing for us in Paris and did an excellent job on our behalf, including chasing an Air Canada rep down the hall when he tried to get away with passing off a business class toiletries kit as our total compensation instead of the $$ that was required. <BR>Maybe we've been lucky, but on the roughly dozen long haul Air France flights we've taken (all in economy), we've had nothing to complain about and lots to praise.<BR>BTilke

Get real

Hanl, get real: vegetarianism is nothing more than a food fetish, it's not supposed to be GOOD (that's not the point, food is potentially harmful, period, isn't this what you veggies think? ), even less so on a plane.

hanl

There's no reason why vegetarians traveling with Air France should be served LESS food than other passengers, that's all I'm saying. And there are degrees of good and bad when it comes to airline food (I admit I've yet to find one airline where the food was actually half-decent). My comment was that Air France is right down at the bottom of the scale.

Ann

Jacque, Ira and Jeff....Jeff is correct. Many times I think maybe it's the peoples attitude with the airlines when they have trouble. With Air France it's the airlines attitude. I know this first hand. They have no consideration for the customer and do tricks like they did to Jeff. My sister ordered tickets from Air France and when they came they were double the price. Air France would do nothing..Nothing. Not even an upgrade. And of course they hadn't recorded her conversation. Then they had too short a conection time coming and going. They missed their connection both ways. That's unacceptable. Going to Italy they had to wait 4 extra hours to connect to the other flight. That put us in the little dark roads of Tuscany at 10 pm. When she complained in a letter to Air France about the over charge, they sent her a very nasty letter back. I know the letter she sent was very nice and business like because I helped her write it so there was no emotion involved. I wouldn't fly Air France.

Ira

Dear Jeff,<BR><BR> You were certainly treated badly.

David J

I too had a horrible experience with Air France last summer. Lost luggage both going and coming, damaged luggage, missed flights because of short intervals for plane changes, lack of concern by staff wwhne they could be found and total indignaiton by all grouns staff to our request fr assistance.<BR><BR>However, upon our return I sent them a letter and received, very quickly, 2 $200 vouchers and $260 for damaged goods and an apology. <BR><BR>

Leann

Of course not EVERY passenger has a bad experience, just alot of them do. We had a bad experience with Air France, really a worse one than with any other airline. They wouldn't let us board our plane because their own transfer system made us late at the gate and they gave away our seats, even though another gate manager called them to alert them that some passengers were waiting at a gate to be transferred to the correct one. They were very, very rude to us for no reason, we were just the pawns being herded around by their own personnel. I won't fly them again.

Vickie

We usually fly Delta BusinessElite however they have no seats for an upcoming trip (using skymiles) so we are using our miles on Air France in First Class in and out of De Gaule. After reading these reviews, I'm in a panic. The thought of giving up 100,000 miles to be treated so poorly is very disturbing. <BR><BR>Does anyone have anything good to say about First Class???