Saturday, August 4, 2012

southwest -- i'm pissed

please consider this a rant. posted below is a response i just sent to southwest customer service to a huge problem that occurred yesterday. you're going to have to glean what happened from this note cause i really have no desire to go through it all. suffice it to say per the title --i'm really pissed!


I am writing to indicate my extreme dissatisfaction with the responses I have received regarding my issue yesterday. Your little Facebook stunt created significant problems for me, which I feel were barely acknowledged by the emails I received -- two of which were clearly form letters. Even the one that was a more personalized response to my long wait time email seemed to be oblivious to the magnitude of the issue. 

I have had over two thousand dollars debited from my bank account as a result of the problems created by your promotion -- a promotion by the way I had no idea was occurring and did not apply to my airfare nor was there an offer given to me when I finally got to speak to someone at 4 am in the morning. To that point, the email indicated that my problem was resolved at 4 am. What your customer service rep neglected to notice though was that the problem was resolved because I called customer service at 4 am. I can assure you that is not my normal time for waking up on a Saturday morning but given my four hour wait the night before, I felt it was necessary to get the problem resolved. Meanwhile, I will have to wait until Monday or Tuesday to have the refund hit my bank account -- a continued inconvenience that once again your responses did not begin to address.

I write this more as an exercise to vent my own frustrations about this situation, which I thought were past me until I received the responses to my emails. It is clear that Southwest has little regard for me as a customer, deciding to paint my issues in a rosy picture of the excitement about your promotion. I  have two flights coming up, following which Southwest will move to my airline of last resort. I state "last resort" as it is likely due to work or some unforeseen circumstance that I may have to fly your airline. You should know that if that situation does occur, it will not be as a result of a lack of trying on my part to find some alternative means for travel. 

the subtext

if a james taylor song is the main theme of this blog, i think it makes sense that given the content of this song and my regard for this par...