[Anonymous]

[RBrown9]

I live in the Middle East and am a frequent traveller on Emirates (and other airlines). Emirates inflight product and service is generally pretty good but I am annoyed at myself for remaining loyal to EK over the past four years in spite of poor to appalling service from their ground staff and customer affairs department, less than transparent pricing policies, frequent flyer program that has become one of the least generous in the industry and other issues. My latest issue involved me receiving the worst treatment ever (in over 20 years of business travel) whilst travelling as a First class passenger from KUL to BAH via Dubai on the 23rd of August. I highlighted my issues to the on board managers on both flights and the first class loung duty manager. They all have my skywards number and did log the issue. No concerned call or email from EK to date. And I tried calling customer affairs today only to get a voice message saying they were too busy to take customer calls. I left a message including my skywards number and phone number. Having not received a call back, I called them at 3.30 pm today (more than 3 hours after leaving my message) to get a voice message saying they close at 3pm!

[capetonianm]

They are so big and powerful and generally offer the best fares on a multitude of longhaul routes. Like RyanAir, although a more upmarket version, they don’t give a toss about customer service as there will always be enough people to fill their aircraft and to travel to ther ghastly hub for ‘holidays’.

Your chances of anything more than a cut and paste ‘apology’ and a voucher for duty free, or a few FF points, are remote.

[ConstantFlyer]

RBrown9

In my experience it’s rarely worth going through the ‘official channels’. Any ‘apology’ is worthless; any ‘compensation’ is more hassle than it’s worth; the least that can be done is to help change working practices so that no-one else suffers similar detriment. That’s usually a matter of improving industry training, regulation and management practice, which is only really possible if you have the ear of an insider. If not, the best course is probably to vote with your feet.

[SimonS1]

The answer is as Constantflyer says. If you aren’t happy with Emirates, vote with your feet and choose someone else.

They are a successful and profitable airline so you won’t change their pricing policy or their frequent flyer programme, so rather than getting stressed and in a lather just find another airline.

I found myself in the same position as a Gold member with BA about 6 years ago but instead of getting worked up we switched our business elsewhere (including to Emirates).

[RBrown9]

Some excellent observations and insights. I fly enough to maintain top tier status on at least 3 ME based airlines. I already use Gulfair for most of my travel within the region. Etihad have matched my EK and GF status so are a good candidate for long haul travel. Both Omanair and Qatar Airways offer excellent services as well. As things stand, am voting with my feet. What I find tragic is my experience of EK inflight service has generally been excellent. Staff on board both sectors I recently flew (when the “last straw” incident occurred due to ground staff) were shocked and genuinely embarrassed at the way I was treated by the EK check in staff in KL – I showed them a video clip of what actually happened which I would be pleased to share with EK customer affairs if they bothered to contact me!

[AMcWhirter]

RBrown9

Sorry to hear about your recent problems in KUL.

But just a small point …

Were the KUL check-in staff you encountered proper employees of EK or were they employed by a ground handling agent who was acting on EK’s behalf ?

Third party ground handlers tend to deal with numerous carriers and may not be as motivated as staff employed by the airline itself.

A major ground KUL ground handling firm called KLAS handles many carriers. It claims to handle EK too.

But as the web page is dated 2004 and seeing as KLAS lists Austrian and BA (who haven’t flown to KUL for a number of years !) as its clients I wonder if KLAS does handle EK today ?

http://www.klas.com.my/customer-airlines.html

[RBrown9]

Well, they were wearing EK uniform. Roughly what happened was as follows: arrived for my flight (EK347 A380 service to DXB) at around 6pm in plenty of time for the 7.30 pm departure; check in staff could not find my ticket and claimed there was no booking. They appeared to spend more time “chastising me” for not carrying a printout of my e-ticket than solving the problem. Booking was located after about 20 minutes; at that stage they had commenced checking in a J class pax with rather a lot of boxes at the F class check-in even though there were two dedicated J class counters open. She appeared to know the check-in staff. Each box was being carefully labelled. Another 15 minutes or so; during both waits I advised them that I had recently injured my anke and could not stand for an extended period – after 20 minutes my ankle started to swell up; finally my baggage was checked in (10 kgs over my F class plus Gold Allowance). Again I was chastised for carrying so much baggage. They insisted on charging me but kindly suggested that I take an extra bag as cabin baggage; I asked to see the station manager but was told that the said manager was in Dubai; interesting to note that EK have three departures per day from KL to DXB and no station manager?? ; I asked for a written acknowledgement of what happened and was told by a gentleman and his supervisor that EK policy was not to acknowledge customer complaints in writing – the two would not give their names; I suggested that I interview them and record the interview – they called a security guard/policeman; I could barely walk at that stage – the only person who gave any help was the lady responsible for manning the F class check-in counter who personally helped me carry one bag – she apologised for her supervisor’s behaviour; got to the lounge as the flight was about to board; had to go straight to the gate – there seemed to be a manager on duty – played back my video clip to him and my extra bag was swiftly loaded in the hold without me asking. A long reply to a short question – EK have their own lounge and employ at least some of their own staff in KUL and am sure some employees were on EK’s payroll.

[RBrown9]

Managed to record my conversation with the two gentlemen without them or their security guard noticing!

[MartynSinclair]

Do you intend posting the video on U Tube??

[RBrown9]

I am considering it. There is also the fact that EK hiked their fares overnight prior to the Eid vacation (by about 25 percent in my case). Reason given was full flights – My guess would be that the flights I was on were two thirds empty in F class (on four sectors) with J class being about 70 percent full! And having to walk from T3 to T1 and then be bussed from Gate 137 to the aircraft for the 50 minute onward flight to Bahrain (total time from leaving the T3 lounge to boarding the flight which was delayed for nearly an hour – 45 minutes) are also the subject of video clips! I am giving EK customer affairs until close of business Sunday to return my call and act – or YouTube it is.

[MartynSinclair]

I hope you get things sorted. However, if not, please leave the U tube link.

[LuganoPirate]

I took would like to see the video.

I agree with most that it’s best not to beat yourself up on this and just walk over to another carrier. QR in my opinion is much better than EK anyway. Mrs. LP is a more frequent flyer and Gold with them (QR) and she praises their customer service. Even calling her to inform of flight times (when she’s booked way in advance) and so on.

Trouble is every airline messes up at some point, though some more than others, so it could end up that we really do walk or swim to our destinations if we end up boycotting them all!

[RBrown9]

That is the problem, we do have to use airlines! I can forgive any organisation if something goes wrong as long as they try to correct it. However, my past experience with EK Customer Affairs has been extremely frustrating. Their tendency has been to: take an excessive amount of time to “investigate” issues; respond without any thorough insight based upon the results of their “investigation”; and try as hard as possible not to address the issue and deny responsibility (blaming the customer appears to be common as does “operational issues” without providing any description of what the operational issues were). Let’s see if they respond tomorrow.

[SimonS1]

Unfortunately that’s big airline syndrome for you. Over the years there have been plenty of moans on here about BA (just an example, before VK winds up) with their standard letters, and if you look at untied.com there is plenty about United as well.

It isn’t satisfactory I agree, but you won’t change it single handed, so cut your losses and move on.

[Author]

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