What was the "shoddy treatment"?

<<Some yelling followed.>>

<<As we wend ourselves through retirement we've started to pamper ourselves more and more. >>

I am angry because some old fart feels that age has given him the right to yell at people.

I am also a retired old fart and I don't feel I have the right to yell at any one for any reason.

Agreed. Some old farts, my father was one, get noticeably nicer & more appreciative as they get older. Others, well, au contraire.

I agree with cdnyul.

My grandmother yelled at people for no valid reason - other than she thought she "deserved" better treatment than anyone else. I despise that behavior. I hated traveling with her. There are effective ways to address issues. I think it was a mistake for the airline to reward the bad behavior with vouchers. It just encourages bullies to bully.

It took weeks to try to sort out why the OP was "entitled" to the vouchers. We finally got his honest answer. It was because he yelled at agents. There is no indication that the airline provided "shoddy treatment" at any point.

starrs, Are you accusing me not giving an honest description of what happened.
I wrote the initial post as I was leaving for the trip and did not really clarify what had happened until I returned.

It's because of the attitudes of RM67, cdnyul and some of those who followed that encourages the airlines to provide the shoddy customer service that they do.

"There is no indication that the airline provided "shoddy treatment" at any point"
If you actually believe this then you believe it's fine for them to send a text telling me I've been moved from Business Class to Economy Coach for a trans Atlantic flight when they could have offered me an almost identical rerouting as I originally had. The seats were available. At the time I selected my rerouted seats Business Class on that flight was almost completely empty. Could the reason have been that they did not have enough seats on that flight for all of the people they move to economy so they figured there would be enough seats if some passengers accepted being moved to Economy? Good thing I made a fuss.

I acted like a perfect gentleman, sorry an old fart gentleman, for the first 5-7 minutes of the telephone conversation. I got nowhere so I escalated.

I assume those who ended up being moved from Business Class to Economy were those who accepted the airline's shoddy treatment of their customers.

Myer
I think it’s perfectly reasonable that you would be upset about being moved from business class to economy class. I would be too if it happened to me.

There was a change of aircraft and the new plane had a different seating configuration. They could not physically fit everyone into the same seats as before, as the seating plan was different. How on earth does that qualify as 'shoddy service'? Do you seriously expect them to have spare aircraft with the same configuration in every city round the planet on the off chance they might have a technical glitch. Care to think about how much extra your ticket might cost to build in that level of redundancy? As for re-routing - I would imagine the vast majority of people would want to stick to their original departure schedule or have no choice in the matter due to onward connections, appointments, whatever. So, no, I don't see it as poor service for them not to offer that option immediately. Btw, I've never had bad service with any airline. I might just be lucky. Or it might be because I don't yell at people or have unrealistic expectations, or think that my wants/needs trump everyone else's.

RM67,
The shoddy treatment was not the changing of the aircraft to one with a different configuration. Things happen.

After 5-7 minutes of being polite and getting nowhere I started to insist they do better. It was then that two different reroutings were offered. The first wasn't very good but I would have taken it if it was the only one available.

The second was almost identical in every way to my original route except instead of flying to Atlanta and on to Frankfurt it was Detroit and on to Frankfurt. The times were almost identical as well.
When I selected our seats, Business Class was almost empty on the flight from Detroit to Frankfurt. When we actually got on that flight Business Class was full. Were almost all of them originally on the same flight we had. I don't know.

The shoddy treatment was having them not offer me a rerouting until I became insistent. So as far as you are concerned my choices were to accept being downgraded from Business Class to Economy for the overnight trans Atlantic flight or act unreasonably. Like I just wrote above, the routing I ended with left at almost the exact same time and arrived in Frankfurt at almost the exact same time. Not too many people on our original flight would have turned down this one.

and To Give Credit where Credit is Due

We much prefer flying out of and into FLL rather than MIA. We also realize that sometimes that results in an extra plane change.

On our upcoming trip our return had us making two changes and arriving in FLL just after midnight. Two days ago I received an email with updated flight times though none of the flight numbers had changed. Our final return to FLL was to become 1 AM instead of just after midnight. I checked Delta's schedule and there was a flight that arrived at about 11:30PM with about 2 1/2 hours between flights. I called Delta and asked if we could switch to the earlier flight. The clerk said that would be no problem but he wanted to check a few things.

When he came back on the phone he told me it would be fine but felt he had another routing that I might like. The choice was ours. What he was proposing left 11:55PM instead of 8:30AM (that would give us a whole extra day at our destination), had one less change and arrived in FLL at 11:00AM instead of 1:00AM. As far as I could see the only reason for not taking this would be if for some reason we had to be back in FLL first thing in the morning. Which we don't.

I asked my wife if she could think of any reason not to take it. An extra whole day on the trip for free, not have to get up at 4AM for the first leg of the return, one less plane change and arrive at 11AM instead of 1AM. She felt it was a nobrainer.

Now that's good service. There might have been some advantage for Delta to have us switch (the first leg back was to be on Virgin Atlantic and now totally on Delta) but that's fine as long as we weren't impacted negatively. In fact we got a way better return home.

Many thanks to the agent on the phone!!!

The never ending story...

One of my least favourite threads ever. Convoluted and unclear. And it even created the environment where Suze and I got into a spat.

I guess it was concern about your post count that made you reply.

If you do bad you should be called out.

And if you do good you should be commended.

I agree.
And topped again two weeks later for no discernable reason.
Five months of "convoluted and unclear"
Evidently, it will never be allowed to die.

There's a title.

You don't have to read it. You don't have to reply.

The title didn't warn that it would in coherent. Obviously I did want to reply!

It's not "in coherent" that you meant to write.

You used "in" mistakenly.

You meant to write "coherent".

Actually, why don't you write English sentences instead of what you wrote.

OP paid for business class to get from A via B to C.
As far as we know, the airline never claimed any force majeure, but changed the aircraft for whatever reason.
Therefore, the airline was in breach of the contract when they were not able to accomodate OP in business class on the booked route.

The obvious and most logical response from any airline should have been to offer a similar routing in business class, and, as a back-up, the original routing in economy plus re-imbursement of the difference in airfare plus some extra compensation for failing to fulfill the contract.

When I book a long flight in business class (which does not happen twice a year), I expect the airline to honor the contract.
Just as the airline expects me to honor the contract, i.e. pay the airfare.
Just imagine the response from any airline if I called them a week before my flight to inform them that I just wrecked my car, couldn't afford to fly in business any longer, and asked them book me in economy instead and refund my biz fare.

Wow, Meyer, I am with you on this one. First class, business class is a heck of a big change to main cabin!!!!! If I were switched just prior to flight with zero compensation, I would be mad too. I have never traveled internationally in business class and I used points to fly BA for part of our trip next fall, a lot of points to be in business LHR to JFK. I paid extra plus all the taxes which makes it not so free on points to sit upstairs in their business class because flyer talk guys say it is the best. So if get bumped, I will be pretty mad! The taxes and pay for seat assignments was about 1200.00
If there is a disaster and I have to change cabins, that is one thing, but to have to change cabins and be offered nothing, that would not work well for me. (And I am not a confrontational person at all).
This past October, we had 5 free suite upgrades with Marriott and we saved them all year for when we would be in Dublin. Just hours before checking in, they said we would not get the upgrade. So saved them all year and could have used them randomly during the year.... I was disappointed but what can you do. But they were not guaranteed. If you pay for something, you should get at least in the same class category or be offered compensation on the spot.

To pay for business class and be put in coach, not acceptable to me.

I will attempt to be fair to both myself and the airline.

The first 5-7 minutes of the conversation was an almost ordinary sounding conversation between an airline and a customer.

I purchased and paid for Business Class tickets and at the last minute and when it was way too late to make other arrangements they changed our seats to Main Cabin (economy). Maybe there was a good reason. Maybe not.

We never talked about compensation for being moved. I'm sure they expected to compensate me for being moved from Business Class. But again, that never came up during our conversation. The agent didn't bring it up and neither did I. It wasn't something I was interested in.

After 5-7 minutes of getting nowhere I began to push back. It became clear to the agent I wasn't going to roll over and accept being moved to Economy.

It was then the agent brought up the topic of rerouting. The first routing he offered was Business Class and while it was not what I wanted, I would have accepted it had there been nothing better. What he offered was quite a bit earlier in the morning, had about 45 minutes between flights and had us arriving in Frankfurt way earlier than I would have liked. Again, if that was all that was available I would have accepted it.

The second routing was almost identical to what we originally had. It was Ft Lauderdale to Detroit to Frankfurt while the original flights were Ft Lauderdale to Atlanta to Frankfurt. However, the takeoff and landing times were almost identical to the original flights.

When he made this offer I looked up the available seats on the Trans Atlantic leg and noticed that Business Class was almost totally empty. I selected the same seats we had on the original flight. What was interesting was that when we boarded that flight Business Class was full. I should have gone around asking the passengers if they were originally on the same flight we were on. I guess that wasn't too important.

And the last issue.

The flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Detroit was in First Class (as it usually is when the main flight is Business Class). However, there were only two seats available. They were on different sides of the plane and about four rows apart. Normally, no big deal. So what. It's only a few hours and we're adults. But by then I was quite annoyed with them making me fight for our Business Class seats. I wasn't about to let them get away with anything. I told the agent I wanted to be compensated. He laughed and said that wasn't going to happen. After all, we were still in First Class. So I asked to speak with a supervisor who immediately offered me credits to be used on a future flight (within a year).

I think that covers everything as fairly as possible. I hope.