Service Please

For those who don’t know, we took advantage of the kids two week break to take a little vacation. The reason that I am telling you this is to tell you a story about good service. Something that we far too often take for granted until we experience the complete opposite. 

P1000634We took a Disney Cruise out of LA down to the Mexican Rivera and it was awesome, and the service was fantastic. Food was great, ship was nice and clean and the staff were wonderful. On the way back home we flew with United airlines from LA to Chicago, during this flight one of my girls became ill and was getting sick. My wife rushed her to the bath room while holding on to an air sickness bag. The bath room closest to us was occupied so my wife took her to the next closest which was in the business class section. No member of the flight crew attempted to help her or check to see if she was alright, in fact an off duty flight attendant sitting in business class told her she could not use that bath room. To top it all off they canceled our connecting flight from Chicago to home and then lost our bags.

The moral of this story is that we should not take good service for granted. We ended up flying Air Canada back home and I doubt we will ever fly United again.

My service promise to you is that I will return calls within 2 business hours, e-mail’s same day and always present the best rates and terms for every situation.

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Cheers,

Pat

p.s- You can find me on Twitter,Linkedin, Facebookand friendfeed.

Here is my wife’s take on United’s lack of service, from the letter that we sent to United Airlines Customer Service Dept;
To whom it may concern,

Firstly I would like to advise you I will, in no uncertain terms NEVER fly United Airlines again!  Here is why. On February 21 my family and I boarded our flight in Los Angeles after a lovely 7 day cruise to Mexico.  My husband and our 3 children(our 6 year old twin girls and 4 year old son) had flown down 12 days prior on our national carrier Air Canada .On which, our son became ill and vomited about 40 minutes after leaving Toronto for L.A.  The attendants on Air Canada promptly helped helped my son get cleaned up gave him a blanket and pillow and did not charge us for our meals. My son arrived in L.A in underwear and a T-shirt, but in no way was I disappointed in the treatment I received from the airline.
Twelve days later we boarded our flight in L.A with United Airlines, not long into this flight my 6 year old daughter began vomiting. I immediately ran her to the nearest bathroom, which was occupied, on the advice of another passenger I ran her down the aisle to the first class bathroom(air sickness bag over her mouth ) where I was stopped by a male attendant who advised I was in the wrong section. When I advised of my child’s situation he relented.  After coming out of the bathroom, no attendant inquired about my child’s well being. I had to ask the same attendant for more airsickness bags and he told me they were in the bathroom.  At no point in the duration of the flight, in which my child vomited throughout, did any staff on the plane offer any help or even inquire about my child.
As we departed the plane she was sick again-nothing, NOTHING!!!!!! I cannot imagine a group of people so singularly without a shred of compassion(for a child no less!) . I even met up with the male attendant in the airport a little later and advised him of my displeasure, he had the nerve to tell he was a passenger ( yet in his uniform) and not working-SCUM!  We were then stuck for the next 5 hours (my child still vomiting) at O’hare before our flight was cancelled.  Luckily we did get rescheduled the next day with Air Canada!!!  My disgust with United Airlines  is so immense, it was hard to put into words.
I do not expect a response from you, nor do I think this will even be read, but I felt it needed to be said.  I would like to commend Ruth in customer service who helped find a very frantic and tired mother a way home. As we are members of Air Canada’s Aeroplan and thus their Star Alliance program, we would expect higher level’s of service from their member partners.

Customer Service
Excellence in customer service is a key to United’s success. Each employee is expected to deal fairly, honestly and ethically with all customers to ensure customer satisfaction.  You may want to get the members of your flight crews to look at your customer service code of conduct and know it by heart.

Sincerely,
Gillian Sawler