Originally Posted by YVRtoYYZ

I got a written, personalized e-mail response including resolution within 48hrs of submission.

Originally Posted by Sopwith

3. Deliberate obstruction: This one begins to make sense. When one experiences the hopeless inadequacy of AC's customer service as much, as often and as long as many of us have, the only explanation that goes to the root cause is that this is the way the senior management wants it to be. To AC's executive suite, customer service is an unnecessary expense with negligible return. Their intended approach is to deliberately obfuscate the customer. Ignore, delay, obstruct, whatever it takes to frustrate them, and hopefully at least some of them will give up and go away. If not, at least we have their money in the bank for a few weeks before we refund it. There is an abundance of evidence that this is the corporate will: no phone number for customer service; weeks of delay before they respond to an on line request; incessant telephone queues "Due to unusually high call volumes..." which are not unusual at all; hopelessly inadequate staffing and response during IRROPS, even when they know a storm is coming for days ahead. All of this points to an intentional culture of contempt and disdain for the customers, flowing down from the highest levels.

That is strong language, as I tend to use in this forum, but the state of customer service can only be explained this way, at least in my mind. There's just no way it could be this bad for this long by accident or incompetence.

So when is it going to improve? Frankly, it won't as long as the current oligopoly persists, the airlines continue to make money and the customers keep buying the cheapest ticket they can find.