[Anonymous]

[cohiba75]

Myself and three colleagues have finally arrived back in London after a nightmare journey with SWISS from Geneva. Their total luck of customer care and customer service shocked us.

All four of us were booked on yesterday evening’s 20:35 GVA to LHR which SWISS cancelled two hours before – saying the plane had gone tech.

After queuing for an hour at the SWISS Desk (manned by Swissport) we were re-booked onto this morning’s 07:30 but told that they would NOT cover our accommodation as they couldn’t find anymore hotel rooms in Geneva with their contracted hotels and they were too busy to look for other hotels!!!

After much shouting, arguing and near rioting from passengers, the manager excitedly gave everyone his name and encouraged them to complain stating that SWISS doesn’t give Swissport any freedom or scope to help passengers. The attitude from all the staff was shocking.

With several conferences going on and several other flights cancelled there was no available rooms in the Geneva area. Our colleagues eventually found us some rooms close to midnight (5 hours later) so we managed about 3 hours sleep with a long 1 hour drive to and from the hotel. Most of the other passengers had to sleep overnight in the airport.

As much respected mamebers of the forum, I am asking for advice on how we shold approach this with Swiss. Unfortunately none of the 4 of us are in the SWISS F/F scheme… Myself and one other colleague are silver Star Alliance. We are all One World Emerald as we normally stick to One World…

Any advice much appreciated…

[Bucksnet]

…fly with BA. Many flights from Geneva to London.

[Edski777]

Cohiba75,

Complain to Swiss via email and demand payment for your hotelroom and other costs. Await their reply and post it on this forum. Bad publicity is something most carriers certainly don’t appreciate.

Not much else you can do at this moment.

Otherwise: consider Easyjet. Normall at a lower cost and you know that the treatment you got from Swiss is standard operating procedure for Easyjet.

[ImissConcorde]

Not the required answer, Bucksnet.
This show that ALL airlines have problems. It’s how such disruption is handled which decides how their customers perceive them.
cohiba75 – you shouldn’t have to have FF status for this to be resolved correctly. Under EU regulations Swiss should have accommodated you. Submit your hotel bill and hopefully they will recompense you without further ado.

[Bucksnet]

I would have thought that Swiss would have had more resources at one of their home bases, and not used handling agents.

[cohiba75]

We thought the same about resources… but everyone at the airport seemed to be Swissport – not a SWISS staff member anywhere

[VintageKrug]

I’ve just dealt with the claims for my recent longhaul delay.

– accommodated overnight, fed and watered
– rescheduled onto new flight and upgraded to F
– BA Amex settled claim for my £200-ish travel disruption (nice glass of Krug and some caviar for lunch, and a few small items of shopping to console me!)
– EU261 claim lodged, and fully expecting the €600 compensation

All in all, you’re often better off being delayed!

[canucklad]

ImissConcorde might be right about compensation, however I would closely check first..

I have a funny feeling Swiss might be exempt from EU regulations!

I agree totally, that it shouldn’t matter whether or not you are a FF or not…out of curiosity who is your Star Silver with ?

If you don’t get any satisfaction a well wordrd letter to Star , cc’ing Swiss management might get their attention !

[VintageKrug]

I’d be interested to know whether Swiss is exempt for certain; I’d imagine if it is flying into an EU airport then it would still be liable under EU261.

[TominScotland]

Bucksnet – GVA is no longer a Swiss home base. It is treated like MAN or GLA within the BA network so they only have handling agents there. In fact, Easyjet is by far the largest operator out of GVA.

Badly handled all round, I agree. Raises questions about the almost perfect qualities which some posters to this Forum ascribe to SWISS…….. How/if they recover will be interesting so keep us posted, cohiba75.

[Bucksnet]

Thanks Tom; I’ve not been to GVA for years now. Swiss still regards GVA as a focus city though, so one would have thought they would have more of a presence there.

[MartynSinclair]

If you claim is legally legit, I wouldn’t waste any more time sending emails / letters / phoning.

If there are 4 of you, join up and go to a Swiss legal firm and get them to deal with it.

If as Canucklad suggests, you may have fallen outside the EU regs and you have no clain, personally, I would listen to what Bucksnet suggests. Enforcing Customer Care is not legally binding….

I have had 2 issues this week, one with my bank raising bank charges by a whopping 1500% (only 3 weeks notice given) and the other wonderful T Mobile dipping their hands into my bank for an unwarranted amount of £700.

Both times, I have left it to regulators/solicitors to deal with – quite frankly, I am fed up battling these large companies, I am too busy enjoying life…. :))

…..and people wonder how the Claims Culture was born.

[BigDog.]

Martyn wrt your £700 taken by T mobile, if they did this on the basis of a direct debit mandate I can categorically state you should have this returned as long as you acted immediately.

The Direct Debits mandate provides you with a guaranteed recourse to recover debits taken regardless.

[MartynSinclair]

Hi Big Dog

My issue with cancelling or claiming on the Direct Debut guarantee is unless T Mobile establish WHY they dipped into my account, their accounting system could view my account as overdue and cut me off – I wouldn’t put it past them.

They have already admitted their Amex refund system is broken, hence why a £200 refund has taken over 5 weeks!

Certain companies appear to be going to all lengths to either hold on to money that is not theirs to keep, or limiting good will gestures and causing customer service standards to drop.

I wonder if the lady who left her phone somewhere in the ME, ever got it back – suppose the airline thought, not our problem, too costly, lets leave it here.

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