ME3 are not that great at service recovery... I was so surprised at the lack of customer service staff at DXB for EK.

Back story:

I flew EK on CPH-DXB-BOM-DXB-CPH. On my first 2 flights, my diabetic meal was not provided. No record of it. So when I arrived from DEL to BOM the day before my BOM-DXB flight, I stopped by the EK desk and asked them if I had a diabetic meal in the system. Oh yes they did. 'Not to be worrying sir'.

So my BOM-DXB came and went, with being moved away from my prebooked emergency exit seat to the last seat on the plane, next to a very obese guy who encroached on my personal space, with a broken IFE on my seat only and no diabetic meal. I had a 20 hour layover in DXB, so left the plane and went to the transfer center. They could not help me with making sure my special meal was on board the next flight and directed me to the customer service desk. Went to the customer service desk and they gave me a form to fill in to file a complaint that would go 'directly to the VP of Customer Service'. 15 minutes of refusing to leave their desk until they made a call to fix my meal the next day, they finally got a supervisor who said that i still had to fill the form and send it by post. But, he would do his best to check with catering and informed me that special meal requests had to be filed 24 hours before my flight and it was only 19 hours now.

I was so surprised that the 400 room hotel I stayed at had a guest relations person on duty from morning to midnight to deal with any complaints. But EK did not. At the airport where 95%+ of their flights either depart or arrive. The Customer Service desk was there to give guidance on where to go in Dubai and in the airport...