Originally Posted by Counsellor
Just got a letter (yesterday) from Flying Blue in Frankfurt. Summary:
Leaving aside their characterization of their service as "competent" and "comprehensive" (and that the translation was done by someone who apparently couldn't distinguish between "form" and "shape", and that Flying Blue hasn't even been around for "the past 18 months"), I must admit that this is an unwelcome devlopment. At least the Frankfurt Service Desk tried!
At the bottom of the letter, FB asks me to address my questions and requests to the FB Helpdesk in France, or to a "KLM Customer Care Germany" which I don't believe I had heard of before (maybe it is new?) that lives in a post box in Amsterdam and has a telephone.
However, this Amsterdam activity only wants to deal with "Complaints, Settlement of baggage claims, and Compliments". Award bookings, upgrades, mileage corrections, questions about my account, and general questions concerning Flying Blue are to go to the "Helpdesk" in France.
I think the key to the Flying Blue attitude toward their customers is nicely expressed in the following fact: All of the telephone numbers, in France, Amsterdam, or KLM reservations, are the kind that the customer has to pay the company in order to use.
I wonder where they get their idea of what "Customer Service" is all about?
There is a KLM Customer care in Germany, they can do seat reservations for revenue tickets and such things. They also did a seat assignment on an award ticket for me once, but otherwise they won't touch FB stuff. As for the AF phone number in France (also Canada), I guess it's no more than 1-2 cent/min if you use standard call by call; they have a regular phone number and you won't have to pay anything in addition to the regular phone charge.