<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Mister Nice:
Had a VERY depressing conversation with a DL On Board Leader OBL. Was stretching in the galley and struck up a conversation with OBL- naturally, I mention my disappointment with PM changes. She replied - "tell me about it" and relayed how she had recently been reprimanded by her superiors for passing along VOLUMES (her word not mine) of complaints regarding the Skymiles changes- Additionally, she forwarded a bunch of VERY negative comments that she had been receiving from paxs regarding experiences on SONG. She said that she had not heard a SINGLE positive comment about SONG. She said that most passengers said NEVER AGAIN and said the service was chaotic , the pitch did not seem to be as advetised and was certainly less than UA EPLUS or AA MoreRoom or jetBlue , and most said it was simply DL Express on a 757. Her supervisor called her in and said that her comments contributed to a "negative working environment", were "bad for morale", and quite franly"not in the best interests of Delta". When she defended herself by asserting that she was simply forwarding CUSTOMER comments she got "We are tired of these whiners - they can never be satisfied, they have no clue when it comes to running an airline." WOW WOW WOW - What a pity - The OBL went on to say that "RUMORS" circulating around DL are that 1. any negative comments regarding SONG are being ignored or "misplaced" 2. word has it that the Satellite TV is WAY behind and maybe 1 or 2 ships will have by 1Q 2004 3. many finance types a DL have referred to SONG as the worst decision in the history of Delta, a drain on resources and a distraction from the core business plan - many wish it would go AWAY - Thought I would pass this along - seems awfully sad - but totally believable. I think it oi time to start another media barrage - Vicki made comments - where is the substance ???? I think the threads on her comments and the ones regarding her skewed math should be forwarded to the media folks in CVG and ATL that seemed sympathetic. As
AC/DC would sing this company is on a "Highway to Hell". </font>
I'm going to play devils advocate here .... when I look at your conversation on the whole as you described, I certainly do see a problem with this employee and maybe their superior knows the score to. It's one thing to talk to a customer about the product, but it's not an F/A's job to play the role of consumer affairs, that's what consumer affairs is for. If an F/A has "volumes" of customer complaints, their supervisor may not be so naive as to not realize that this F/A is doing too much to solicit such comments themselves, when maybe instead they should ask the customer to contact consumer affairs directly. After all, what's a better way to change things, have fifty customers individually contact consumer affairs or have one F/A provide "volumes" of information from "anonymous" customers.
Even more worrisome is that this employee then went on to vent to you spreading rumors about things like that Satellite TV and finances of Song. I hate to sound like another unpopular FT'er, but that's just not right, and even though you may have been looking for such information, from the point of view of DL management I'd be pretty unhappy if my employees were spreading such rumors around to customers.