Turkish Airlines – The worst customer complaint dept

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Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 46 total)

  • Kubra
    Participant

    This is the worst airlines possible especially when it comes to resolving customer complaints. The complaints department provide misleading information by telling customers they will come back to you between 2 to 7 days. It has been over 3 weeks and yet as a customer I have not had any update.

    We had a flight cancelled by Turkish airlines and then as a customer when asked the customer rep which flights were available, they have only provided evening arrivals. On the website there were morning flights which wasn’t given to me as an option, so when I requested it to be changed to a flight more suitable to me, Turkish airlines asked me to provide a feedback. I am still waiting for an update on my feedback…. I have called over 15 times and yet still nothing.

    It has been over 3 weeks. This is suppose to be world class airlines and yet their service is nothing over 1 star. I shouldn’t have to suffer for Turkish airlines fault!


    canucklad
    Participant

    My best advice …

    Just let it go, no point wasting your energy on it.
    They never ever resolved my problem, neither did they reply to any of my correspondence and I escalated my reasonably minor complaint up the chain.
    It’ll just be an exercise in futility

    Great in the air, bloody awful on the ground — maybe its just a cultural thing on how people deal with criticism

    2 users thanked author for this post.

    AFlyingDutchman
    Participant

    [quote quote=949505]Great in the air, bloody awful on the ground — maybe its just a cultural thing on how people deal with criticism[/quote]

    100% agree with you. Superb in the air, disastrous if something goes wrong. This has also been said about EK and QR and probably a few others where the on board experience and/or Lounge experience is great, but when things go wrong they really show their strength or in these cases, their weakness.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    cwoodward
    Participant

    Over the years I have seen this thread several times.
    Clearly nothing changes.
    I avoid Turkish like the plague for this reason and also because of the cockpit culture recounted to me by several experienced pilot friends who all consider Turkish to be one of the several airlines considered to be ‘most likely to’.
    None of them will go near Turkish and I readily accept that they all know much more about these things than do I.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    capetonianm
    Participant

    I recommended TK to a friend who is a very frequent and discerning traveller, travelling between ZA, EU, and West Africa several times a year, as well as less frequent trips to the FE and NAMER. He was absolutely delighted with TK business class and never had any other than excellent experiences in the air in several years of using them.

    One on occasion he missed a connection through IST and it was at that point that he realised how atrocious their ground service is, and the way their customer services dealt with subsequent complaint compounded his dissatisfaction.

    Being a very wise and philosophical chap, and an accountant to boot, he said to me : “It’s not worth making an issue of it. I had so many good experiences with them I shall write off the single bad one against the many good ones and walk away while I’m in profit.”

    I have had a couple of good flights with them but I won’t use them, or the ME carriers, for the reasons outlined by cwoodward above. I may be prejudiced, bigoted, biased and many other things but I stick to European airlines, and only a handful of those. In this context I do not consider Turkish as European, whatever they and others may claim.

    2 users thanked author for this post.

    cwoodward
    Participant

    Over the past 40 years Turkish have the worst safety record of any European airline with more crashes,incidents,near misses and fatalities than any other airline other than Aeroflot, who I understand is not always catagorised as a European airline.


    SAS
    Participant

    Turkish Airlines is now Europe’s third largest airline after RyanAir and EasyJet in terms of numbers of passengers carried. They have not had a single fatal crash in just over a decade and have one of the largest fleets and hubs in Europe. Since the Istanbul airport serving as their largest hubs is on the European side of the Bosphorus, Skytrax and Wikipedia list them as a European airline.

    1 user thanked author for this post.

    agsteele
    Participant

    I fly with TK very frequently and find my problems to be infrequent. When things have gone wrong I’ve been properly compensated but I confess that I have learned to take the issue up on my return to the UK when I speak to the airport office. The only time I had a less than satisfactory response was when my flight was diverted to Cairo. Ground handling for TK at Cairo was by Egypt Air. Communication was terrible and promised buses never arrived. I eventually rented a car which the of us took. I claimed a refund at my destination but was advised to wait until I got home unless I was willing to receive the refund in Egyptian pounds. So I put the claim in at Manchester. The refund arrived within a week in my bank account – twice.

    So my advice is to speak to someone face-to-face at your home airport. The online website forms do take an eternity to get a response.

    I have to say this isn’t the only airline where I’ve found the home airport office to be the place to raise a problem.


    cwoodward
    Participant

    Suhail,sadly you are mistaken te TK more recent safety record.

    Turkish Airlines Flight 6491 crashed in 2017 killing 39 people
    Turkish Flight 634 crashed in 2003 killing 75
    Turkish Flight 1878 crashed on landing in Istanbul in 2015 ripping off one wing. The aircraft caught fire was destroyed. Passengers escaped.
    Turkish Flight 442 runway excursion at Lviv 7th July 2019. aircraft damaged and disabled
    Turkish Flight 43 Johannesburg December 2018 rejected take-off due to cockpit windows open. Aircraft veered off runway and sustained landing gear damage.
    Turkish Flight 350 Istanbul January 2017. severe tail strike damage on take-off. Aircraft could not continue – burn-off fuel and returned safely.
    TK-160 at Madagascar 28 Jan 2016 landed short of the runway damaging the aircraft undercarriage and destroying approach lights and antenna
    TK 2504 at Bodrum March 2016 Aircraft missed the runway on landing and finally landed on a taxiway.
    TK 1951 February 2009 to Amsterdam. Crashed 1 mile short of the runway killing both pilots and 5 passengers

    The list runs to many more recent pilot errors which is the reason why most pilots and many knowledgeable frequent flyers avoid Turkish

    5 users thanked author for this post.

    CathayLoyalist2
    Participant

    CWoodward´s post is to say the least damming. I would that thought that record would have prompted an enquiry into Turkish Airlines fitness to fly


    SAS
    Participant

    The 2017 crash you refer to was operated by ACT Airlines, not Turkish Airlines.

    The last fatal crash of an airliner operated by Turkish Airlines was back in 2009 in the Netherlands. Turkish Airlines has not had any FATAL accidents of its planes since then, only non fatal incidents.

    Since 2009, the number of passengers flying with Turkish Airlines has increased from 25.1 million in 2009 to 75 million in 2018 – an almost threefold increase in less than a decade.

    So if follows Turkish Airlines’ safety record has improved markedly in the past decade, even though I agree it was poor prior to that.


    cwoodward
    Participant

    Suhil wrote ‘The 2017 crash you refer to was operated by ACT Airlines, not Turkish Airlines”.

    None the less it was a Turkish aircraft operating under a Turkish Airlines flight number with Turkish air crew’
    This I believe rather underscores my observations re the safety of Turkish aviation and pilot training in general as this crash was once again caused by gross pilot error.

    Perhaps Turkish Airlines have improved or perhaps they have just been lucky in the past few years. The number of recent reported incidents indicate that they have just been lucky….. time will tell.


    capetonianm
    Participant

    The number of recent reported incidents indicate that they have just been lucky….. time will tell.

    Hopefully it won’t, but I know what you mean!
    In the meantime I won’t be flying on a Turkish airline.


    jjlasne
    Participant

    What about Pegasus?


    SAS
    Participant

    Pegasus Airlines is Turkey’s second largest airline, after Turkish Airlines. Their inflight service is not that extensive since it is a low cost airline.

    It has never had a fatal crash.

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