Originally Posted by
KrnGrs
I am sorry, but expecting 3 seats to be blocked is just a little bit entitled, if you are a Plat. You paid for econ, you might get one seat blocked but I don't see what would entitle you to get an entire row. What if everyone would ask to have all seats blocked? What if another flight was delayed/canceled and they needed to rebook those on your flight?
If anything, the gate agent should have just denied your outrageous request.
I think that's a slightly different situation to the one the OP has posted. There are two issues here:
1 - a frequent flier, that EK professes in communications to him/her that they value that business, asks for a reasonable request, that is, on a light load flight, that they put a note in the system/block (which is possible, but is also possible to be overridden), 3 seats in a row.
2 - OP is promised something (and in the hospitality business if someone says they will do something for you, a customer treats that as a promise) and then finds out that the promise is broken: and another person from the company in a position to do something about it refuses to do something to remedy that.
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About the very idea of a seat block: I think it is a nice gesture, and understand that operational concerns, would trump that of a nice gesture, and set my expectations accordingly. It would be nice, but if someone sat there, then, sure, I still have a seat next to me, and if the flight load is low enough I guess I can find somewhere else if I really care that much about the 4 row. I don't think it's too outrageous a request, but it's one that is easily denied and that's no big deal - any entitlement issue on the OPs part would be the expectation that having rows blocked as standard and that it isn't a favor being done to him/her. As said above, on a light load flight, it costs nothing and can build free goodwill. Why wouldn't you try and fulfil that request if you are the service minded organisation you profess to be. But if you agree to do it the mess up, it costs goodwill...
However, in this case, the OP has been told that it can be done - but then in the end that gets yanked away. That's a service failure, even if the initial agent was in the wrong for agreeing. In a customer-oriented department, the job is to satisfy and exceed customer expectations: they accidentally set the bar too high and then, when they had a solution (purser can move people), they didn't do it. Internally, the purser and the check-in agent are different people, but these technicalities don't matter to customers - they are both "Emirates", and nor should they. If a hotel hires bad contractors for things like tours or the spa, it still reflects badly on the hotel. Same here, IMHO.