Emirates Accidentally Sends Explicit Email to Passenger in Response to Complaint
Jeff Edwards May 24, 2017
After a flyer complained to Emirates Airlines about a delayed flight, she inadvertently received an internal communication with some colorful language by way of a response.
A passenger says that she was awaiting a response from Emirates customer service representatives regarding her complaint about a recent delayed flight. Instead, she found rudely worded communications between two airline employees belittling her complaint when it arrived in her inbox.
Claire Finch told The Independent that an application for reimbursement following a delayed flight had been accepted and she was awaiting a confirmation number when she received the unexpected response from the airline. The subject line of the email reportedly read, “WTF.”
The message didn’t get any more appropriate from there.
“… is she on about?!? If you’ve put it in the letter, what the fuk [sic] does she need to do!!!” the message continued. The explicitly worded query appears to be one customer service representative belittling the passenger for wasting his time.
Later, Finch says, another email arrived. This time, the message was a request to ignore the previous, more colorful correspondence. The brief message simply noted that “The sender would like to recall the message: WTF.”
Finch says that the airline did not respond to a request to clarify the communications for nearly a month. When the airline finally got back to her, she says the tone was noticeably more appropriate and this time came from a high-level executive.
“Naturally, I was most concerned to discover that you had inadvertently been copied on an inappropriate internal communication, which was unrelated to yourself or any other passenger,” the more recent email read. “Please be assured that we do not condone such actions and this is not indicative of our high standards and the image which Emirates wishes to portray. I can confirm that this matter has already been dealt with internally with the employee concerned.”
Finch told the newspaper the she was not inclined to accept Emirates’ recent about-face.
“I feel very disappointed and disillusioned with Emirates,” she told the newspaper. “They hold themselves up to be one of the more upmarket airlines but their customer service is nothing short of shocking. I fully accept that mistakes happen but when they do, a company is measured on how they put them right. I feel Emirates have actually treated me with contempt and if it were not for The Independent’s intervention, I would still be awaiting a response.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
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At least she received a response. Airlines no longer bother answering back.
Message recall (& re-send) is also a trick I use to get people to read my original message. Anyone who sees the recall request thinks there's was something worth reading in the original...usually its too late for thevrecall to work, but even if it does the subsequent email is a duplicate so nothing lost.
Welcome to the reality of customer service jobs and the emotions that inevitably come with it.
“The sender would like to recall the message: WTF.” -- that is a typical message that MS Exchange server sends to the original message recipients when the sender uses "Recall message" function. That function works with the realm of the corporate MS Exchange server (it cancels the message on the server), but looks stupid and ridiculous to the recipients outside of that microcosm. I've received such messages on numerous occasions from unsuspecting clerks. So, for that "Recall" message, blame MS for that "feature", and the lack of employee training @Emirates.
Lol. Sounds like a typical case of "When you pay peanuts, you're going to get..." :-)