Originally Posted by
Dr. HFH
So words equivalent to "That's OK, I wasn't going to use it anyway..." never pass your lips? You construct artificial disappointment for the purpose of what, -- pointing out someone else's error? Making them feel badly? Getting an apology? Compensation?
How about wine? Do you specifically order the red wine when you see that the FA has run out even though you prefer white so you can demand compensation?
And what about when the town closes a road for construction? Do you demand compensation from the town for your inconvenience (real or manufactured), or do you just go the other way around? And if you don't demand compensation from the town for the inconvenience, why demand it from an airline, never mind why lie about it?
And I'm not picking on you, although your post is the subject here. How did so many of us on FT get into this compensation-for-everything-no-matter-how-trivial mindset? How did we come to expect absolute perfection with no exceptions in travel when we don't in the rest of our lives? I trust that everyone who takes this approach to travel providers (airlines, hotels, etc.) freely hands out compensation in their own lives when they make mistakes.
Those items are not even close to being the same. For starters, with the town example, I didn't pay the town for a service. The town is not a business I'm doing a transaction with. For the wine example, running out of wine is something that can happen on a plane, or at a restaurant, or anywhere that a commodity like that is finite. Something like a power port not working is 100% the responsibility of the maintenance department for an airline, the business I'm doing a transaction with. The only reason it isn't working is because of poor maintenance. This isn't saying you should be compensated for everything. However, if a business promises me a service and only partially comes through, they should do something to make up for that. Let's take an example of buying a TV. If everything on it is working, but one HDMI port is defective, do I just say "hey, they got most of the TV right, so I should just suck it up and not ask for it to be fixed or compensated for it"? No, I'm going to either demand a new TV, the TV being fixed or some type of refund. In this case, the airline advertised a flight with various features, one of which is a power port. They did not deliver on that one feature, and thus, they should do something to make up for that.