JetBlue TrueBlue - Not Happy With JetBlue

Our company purchased a ticket for a contractor to travel MCO-JFK-BTV (8/14)...a few days later, our company email received an Electronic Inconvenience Voucher for $25USD apparently because of some undisclosed problem on Flight 148 ex JFK that evening. This must have been a very MINOR issue, since the flight, while delayed, was no more than 45min late or so...not worth giving out all pax a voucher.

Not only did we not request this voucher, this ticket was purchased by our company, the voucher was sent to our company email address, but they are adamant that it can only be used by this contractor who will NEVER be hired our company again.

When we have received inconvenience vouchers from AC and DL, they have been assignable...and there was initial executive start-up synergy between JetBlue and WestJet, and WestJet will allow even a ticket credit to be assignable, not just an inconvenience voucher.

The standard template email blowoff from "April" in "Customer Commitment Crew" stated "vouchers are issued for the inconvenienced customer and done so as invitation for them to fly with us again and have a better experience."

If anyone was inconvenienced, it was me having to wait for the hour to pick up the contractor, and pay for an extra hour of parking...the passenger could have cared less, their ticket had been paid for by somebody else, and the passenger didn't even ask for compensation.

Here is an example of an airline that doesn't get it...nobody was asking them to issue TWO vouchers, just to accept (or reissue) the one they gave. As it stands now, they won't be getting ANY business, so the "invitation for them to fly with us again" will be thrown in the garbage and did them no good.

Wow. :rolleyes:

The flight was delayed an hour. Most carriers would give nothing. jetBlue follows their Passenger Bill of Rights (which I believe is relatively useless, but I digress) and issue a voucher and you really are going to complain that the voucher isn't transferable?

Had they done nothing (you would have sat in the parking lot the same, just like any other delay) would you have disavowed the carrier? I am quite sure that they don't mind that the voucher won't be used. They bank on that to a certain extent. And I'm betting that when push comes to shove and you need to fly a contractor in again, your company will still choose based on price and if they are the cheapest jetBlue will still get the business.

I don't get the WestJet reference at all. The two carriers are wholly unrelated. WestJet has an agreement in principle with Southwest, not jetBlue.

Why not forward the voucher to the contractor?
You would hope he would do the same if the situation was reversed.

Why not forward the voucher to the contractor?
You would hope he would do the same if the situation was reversed.


Because I hope never to see or hear of this woman again in my life. I had put those 48hrs behind me, until JetBlue reopened the wound by sending the voucher to me, as the purchaser, but with a sugary sweet "Dear (...)" ...

They have a chance that the voucher will be redeemed if they let our company use it. The voucher will NOT be used by this particular person because they depend on others buying them their tickets to fly themselves in, not to buy the ticket themselves.

Rather than let it go to waste, I might search out someone with the same name on Facebook and give it to them....solves both problems...the useless worker doesn't get rewarded, and the sanctimonius airline can't write it off as a non-redeemed voucher.

Wow sounds like someone is having a bad hair month! But seriously - it is posts like this that make me question why I use FT - as SBM12 pointed out most people would think "wow great service from JetBlue to offer a voucher for such a minor delay", and it's $25.00 - what is the big deal? We get you did not like the contractor - so throw it away, but hardly grounds for trashing an airline in a public forum. I for one have never (yet) flown JetBlue - but certainly intend to now, if they are the type of airline that care enough about their passengers to offer some sort of recompense for a flight that is 45 minutes delayed!

To keep it simple, the airline has to chose someone who was inconvenienced. The passenger is the logical choice, as sorting out who actually paid for the ticket, or who provided the original form of payment, is more problematic. In many cases, the purchaser is not even involved in the travel. In your situation, that was not the case.

I could see your point in transferability if the voucher were 250USD, but 25USD is a good will gesture that you cannot, unfortunately, take advantage of.

Now you could subtract 25USD from the payment to the contractor and include the voucher:)

I will definitely use 6P&E's idea and deduct the $25USD from her expense report reimbursement...

As an electronic voucher though, I cannot see how B6 cannot be as proactive as AC and DL and make the vouchers transferable. They don't have to do any sort of research to see who/what/when/where was the purchase....enter the certificate number in the file, it is used up...period. Other carriers make their inconvenience vouchers transferable, so shouldn't be rocket science for B6 to do the same.

I will definitely use 6P&E's idea and deduct the $25USD from her expense report reimbursement...
You've said above that your company paid for the ticket, right? That's why they sent the voucher to you. You have no basis to short the contractor $25 in this case as she is not trying to claim reimbursement for it.

Get over it and move on. Life is too short to spent wrapped up on such nonsense.

No one has answered the question posed by the OP. Why aren't B6 vouchers assignable when other airlines allow this?

Maybe B6 vouchers are not assignable because B6 issued the voucher, made the rules, the rules may say they can't be assigned, so B6 plays by the rules they set?!

Seems rather obvious...it is THEIR airline, their money (voucher), their rules and they can do what they want....other airlines have different rules....not exactly rocket science.

The pax was inconvenienced, albeit not too badly, and a $25 voucher is more than most people will get for a lot worse.....

I guess I don't see why you ask the question of why B6's vouchers are not transferrable...it's pretty easy...jetBlue set the rules....!:rolleyes:

Maybe B6 vouchers are not assignable because B6 issued the voucher, made the rules, the rules may say they can't be assigned, so B6 plays by the rules they set?!

Seems rather obvious...it is THEIR airline, their money (voucher), their rules and they can do what they want....other airlines have different rules....not exactly rocket science.

The pax was inconvenienced, albeit not too badly, and a $25 voucher is more than most people will get for a lot worse.....

I guess I don't see why you ask the question of why B6's vouchers are not transferrable...it's pretty easy...jetBlue set the rules....!:rolleyes:

Ummm, okay. I think you need to calm down. ;)

I find it interesting that B6 would do something different than others in the industry in this instance.

And B6 is not like UA for instance which gives out vouchers for every little thing after people waste a lot of time writing to them to complain about their crappy service or plane interiors held together with duct tape. They create a culture of whiners who will only fly the airline and put up with the crappy service just to get another voucher to use the next time. Played that game and it is just not worth it.

This is a proactive gesture. If you can't take advantage of it, accept the gesture and move on.

[QUOTE=6P&E;12268803]To keep it simple, the airline has to chose someone who was inconvenienced. The passenger is the logical choice, as sorting out who actually paid for the ticket, or who provided the original form of payment, is more problematic.

How can it be "problematic" when, on their website, they have a HUGE box asking "Who is Buying?" -- asking for name, address, phone number, and email of the PURCHASER...might as well enter Donald Duck, 1 Disney Way, Orlando...if the info is so "important" to them.

As for the WestJet reference, David Neeleman was a Co-Founder of WestJet, and the web-based reservations interface used by both carriers is the same.
It is apparent that WS is a far more purchaser-friendly (hence, corporate traveler friendly) carrier than B6.

If they had wanted to give the pax DIRECTLY, while ON-BOARD, an inconvenience chit...that is one thing. But to send it to ME, at my email, as the purchaser, at the email address they asked of ME when they took MY credit card...but then tell ME that I cannot use it...and presume that I will sing a happy song and give it on to someone who is undeserving...all they did was stir up the mad and bad feelings, particularly when "April the Robot" answered back with the typical, legacy-carrier style "can't do" whereas the Customer Relations people at AC/DL/US etc. seem to be a lot more flexible when a reasonable explanation is presented to them -- nobody was asking for a SECOND voucher, just to have it usable by the purchaser...and by not doing it, they readily accept that the voucher will never be redeemed, which was undoubtedly their intention from the beginning, which makes it a meaningless gesture....so, to that end, I will "accept the gesture" as being just that -- meaningless -- and give them one back in return.

If they had wanted to give the pax DIRECTLY, while ON-BOARD, an inconvenience chit...that is one thing. But to send it to ME, at my email, as the purchaser, at the email address they asked of ME when they took MY credit card...but then tell ME that I cannot use it.
This is the part I just don't get. Their comp systems are electronic and are triggered to send to out after the fact from a centralized system. They only have one contact - the purchaser - so that is where it is sent. Had they given the contractor the cert on board you'd have never known. But now that you know that they were trying to do something useful you're annoyed because it isn't even more flexible. The credit is for an inconvenienced passenger. You were not the passenger. You don't get to use the voucher.

Why does B6 work that way? I have no idea. But I think you've gone off the deep end a bit here in the ranting. The agent is following the company's policies. You may not like them, but you're not in much of a position to disparage the employee for following company procedures.

So let me get this straight. You say the "inconvenience" was not worth giving out a voucher for but you're upset that JetBlue sent out a voucher? I would have named this thread "Very Happy With JetBlue."

Issuing the voucher "per se" is not the problem...sending it to my address but not allowing me, as the purchaser to use it, as AC, DL, etc., would have, is. They specifically know that I am the purchaser, from the details given on their website. The passenger was in NO WAY INCONVENIENCED, did not even mention anything about the delay...she was complaining more these 48hrs that Burlington,VT was a boring city, that the radio stations had no good music, that there was nowhere "funky and hip" (her words) for after hours, etc., etc.
The only person inconvenienced was ME, waiting for her to arrive, and getting her to the job site an hour late for which she could have cared less since she was billing from the moment she left MCO. If they had been in the least bit considerate of the inconvenience at BTV -- i.e. they never bothered to update the arrivals board to indicate the delayed status of the flight, they never bothered to make a PA announcement as to its status, there was no B6 agent at their counter -- then I might be less upset at them now...

If you are going to stick it to the contractor, I suggest you bill her for the drinks that were offered at no extra charge on the aircraft, after all this was included in the price of the Jetblue ticket and she would have paid for them on other airlines. In addition, there was no extra charge for the Direct TV service. If she never utilized either..too bad!! They were paid for!!

Let's see, she flew MCO-JFK-BTV? Frontier charges $6 per leg for 24 channels, (25 cents per channel) Jetblue has 36 channels...$9 per leg...$18 right there!

If she had one can of soda per leg and a snack you can bill her for $5 per leg there, Spirit charges $3 for soda and $2 for Pringles. Another $10!!!

If she just had carryons bill her for the free bag that was included in her ticket..there's another $15! Again, if she didn't..."tough cookies"..you were entitled to it.

Bag, TV, drinks and snack>>> $43!!! Now we're getting somewhere!!!

Now...if you want to stick it to the airline too, give her the voucher to use on a future flight. This way it may get used rather than just deleting the email. That'll teach mean ol' Jetblue!!!

The way I see it, a $25 voucher was unexpectedly issued to the traveler for something minor. Something few airlines, if any, would have done. You now want to use it and JetBlue says it is only for the traveler. You had a bad experience with this contractor and Jetblue reminded you of it...they owe you big time now??

Maybe this voucher cannot be utilized by you, but are there advantages to Jetblue over other airlines? Yes. Are there advantages to other airlines over Jetblue? Yes.

Why doesn't Jetblue allow anyone to use the voucher. I don't know...they just don't. Maybe someone should find out if David Neeleman's AZUL allows inconvenience vouchers to be used by someone else, then explain the relevance.

Why do OTHER airlines refuse to let people use an unused ticket in their name as credit toward the purchase of a ticket in someone elses name, yet this is no problem with Jetblue regardless of who purchased the ticket? I don't know.

Why get in a tizzy over a $25 credit and just give her a copy of the email so she can use it. Does it really hurt anyone? If you are trying to get people to stop flying Jetblue over this, I don't think are succeeding! Let it drop and move on, is it worth the stress???

Why get in a tizzy

Excellent question. I don't understand why some here are in a tizzy over the simple question the OP asked. I know some would rather cut off their left arm than suggest that another airline does something better than JetBlue, but maybe, just maybe, this is a feature they could implement in the future.

How would Jetblue ever know that you were the one waiting? That just seems like a silly point to me.

Excellent question. I don't understand why some here are in a tizzy over the simple question the OP asked. I know some would rather cut off their left arm than suggest that another airline does something better than JetBlue, but maybe, just maybe, this is a feature they could implement in the future.

No tizzy here! This is one of the funniest threads I have read in quite some time!:)

The only one in a tizzy seems to be the OP! Probably because he indicated the voucher was not necessary, then becomes irate when it cannot be used! As I indicated Jetblue does some things better and other airlines do other things better.

What I find funny about this thread is how the OP became upset over the failure of the contractor to live up to his/her expectations and then became upset at Jetblue for "reminding" him/her of the poor experience with this contractor by sending an admitedly unecessary voucher and then wants to take it out on Jetblue!

Am I serious about estimating the value of the drinks, snacks, TV and baggage and charging the contractor? Of course not! Just demonstrating "absurdity by being absurd!" (If I was serious I would have calculated the value of the true blue points and suggesting charging for those too!)

Allowing the voucher to be used by the original purchaser of the ticket is a valid point and perhaps a well crafted email sent to Jetblue via their website would put some wheels in motion, but arguing that it was not necessary and then getting mad when you can't use it is just laughable!

I will definitely use 6P&E's idea and deduct the $25USD from her expense report reimbursement...

That's a completely insane idea. You are obligated to reimburse expenses in negotiable currency, not vouchers. Ethically, you can no more do this than you can reimburse your contractor with Tide and Cheerios coupons you found in the Sunday paper.

They specifically know that I am the purchaser, from the details given on their website. The passenger was in NO WAY INCONVENIENCED, did not even mention anything about the delay...she was complaining more these 48hrs that Burlington,VT was a boring city, that the radio stations had no good music, that there was nowhere "funky and hip" (her words) for after hours, etc., etc. Irrops compensation, like miles (tier points), are typically awarded to the passenger, not the purchaser. Are you also suggesting the contractor owes you the TB points she may have earned for the trip? Miles, etc. are a form of compensation, and I've never in my life handed over a business-travel mile to an employer.

It sounds to me like you don't like this woman and are transferring your anger to the plane she rode in on.

The contractor may not have been a bowl of peaches, but she is right about BTV being short of funky, hip places for after hours.

I will definitely use 6P&E's idea and deduct the $25USD from her expense report reimbursement...

For the record, there was a :) at the end of my suggestion.:D

Ethically, you can no more do this than you can reimburse your contractor with Tide and Cheerios coupons you found in the Sunday paper.

How about McDonald's Arch Cards? I once got one as an extra bonus and got the amount added to my 1099! :)

(If I was the OP, logic would dictate I boycott Mickey D's for that reason!)

The only person inconvenienced was ME, waiting for her to arrive, and getting her to the job site an hour late for which she could have cared less since she was billing from the moment she left MCO. If they had been in the least bit considerate of the inconvenience at BTV -- i.e. they never bothered to update the arrivals board to indicate the delayed status of the flight, they never bothered to make a PA announcement as to its status, there was no B6 agent at their counter -- then I might be less upset at them now...

anyone else waiting for an april fools post to wrap this thread up?

anyone else waiting for an april fools post to wrap this thread up?

Yeah...nothing has been added lately, it no longer amuses me.

How much time has been wasted going on and on about a $25 voucher? If the OP's company is this uptight over $25, then I'm sure the contractor never wants to see or hear from them again either. Good lord... :rolleyes: