Air Canada's bug letter
Sat 29 Oct 2011 by mskala Tags used: travelWell, I wasn't looking for compensation to help me feel better about what already happened. That's past and cannot be changed, and the actual expenses I incurred were minimal and don't need to be reimbursed; but the future can be changed, and what I was looking for from Air Canada was some solid reason to believe that it will never happen again. Giving me a discount code or similar benefit serves that goal only if I can reasonably believe that it costs them more to do that than it would have cost to solve my problem at the time it could have been solved - so that at a future opportunity they will have an incentive to solve the problem rather than paying me off afterward. A back-of-the-envelope calculation (based on number of passengers involved, number likely to complain and get paid off, and so on) suggests the break-even point would be a payoff with a wholesale cost of at least about $5000; and that's far more than it's plausible they would ever offer, and far more than 15% off any ticket they sell.
Instead, I figured it was possible, and I was hoping, that they'd give me some other reason to think that it would never happen again: for instance, by telling me that it was against policy and they would follow their policy better in future; or even that they were changing their policy. A policy change to "find me an hotel when that is impossible" wouldn't be the only way they could change the policy; I'd have been pleased if they'd just pull strings to have me and the other passengers allowed to remain in the terminal overnight. I know that's possible, it would have cost them very little money (much less than finding hotels in a town where the hotels are all sold out) and it's something Air Canada could do that I could not do for myself.
But they didn't tell me their agents' actions were against policy, nor that their policy would change. Instead they gave me documentation in writing that they think they did nothing wrong, and implicitly that they will do it again if they have the chance. Since my point of view is that it must never happen again, the logical conclusion is that I have to stop doing business with Air Canada.
Unfortunately that won't be easy. There aren't many choices besides Air Canada on some routes into, out of, and within Canada; and because much of my travel is for work and paid for out of other people's budgets, I'm not always completely at liberty to choose the airline I use. So it's not realistically possible that I can promise myself never to step onto an Air Canada plane again. But I'm certainly going to try to avoid it.
2 comments
Axel - 2011-10-30 10:04