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What happens when a journalist gets poor service

What happens when a journalist gets poor service

Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:40 am
  #16  
 
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She'll be complaning about being so pretty that she gets bad treatment due to it next.....
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:42 am
  #17  
 
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Judging by her Twitter account she likes to whinge a lot when things don't work exactly as she'd like, and those supposed wrong-doers don't respond immediately and personally to her via Twitter.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:43 am
  #18  
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Originally Posted by steve_w
So, someone raises some possibly valid criticisms (that tally with my own experience) and instead of some reasoned answers everyone points and laughs because hey, the silly girlie writes freelance for a paper that's not blue in flavour, has a blog and uses twitter?

Good grief.

And she's not my friend - just one of the many tech journos I follow for work.
But had she made them without her constant praise of Easy Jet, followed by her request for an upgrade and offering her services to BA for a fee, then maybe she would have been more respected. @:-)

Her lack of knowledge on flow control, and other jibes also made it more of a rant than highlighting possible valid points.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:44 am
  #19  
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What a boring piece of writing.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:47 am
  #20  
 
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Originally Posted by sunrisegirl
But had she made them without her constant praise of Easy Jet, followed by her request for an upgrade and offering her services to BA for a fee, then maybe she would have been more respected. @:-)

Her lack of knowledge on flow control, and other jibes also made it more of a rant than highlighting possible valid points.
Quite. Nothing as bad as an uninformed journalist.

It does point to a fundamental point about the BA product offering though - BA is positioned as a full service airline, with a (justifiably) proud history, so people (especially Brits) automatically hold it to a higher standard than practically any other airline.

Whether this is right or wrong is a different debate but it does speak to a major problem with how BA approach the market: they are a massive airline with great products and fantastic staff who manage to deliver pretty consistently good service (IMHO) across the entire network, yet are hobbled by a main hub airport that is, in capacity terms, stuck in the 1970s which can throw everything tango-uniform at the drop of a hat... and the odd rule or procedure that should've been eliminated years ago.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:47 am
  #21  
 
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I think there is a lot there that resonates if you have ever had to complain about BA services: the responses you get from BA are apalling - as the writer says - responses from BA to complaints almost invariably look like a more or less random set of canned paragraphs put together by some poor individual sitting in a call centre (who most likely hasn't even the vaguest understanding of what travelling on BA is actually like).

To me at least these kinds of responses really do send out the message that 'we are really far too busy to respond to your complaint properly; so please take a few miles and stop bothering us.' That's fine if that's how BA wants to treat it's customers but they should probably then make it clear what they actually mean by 'To Fly, To Serve'.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:49 am
  #22  
 
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Originally Posted by sunrisegirl
I notice at the end she's offering her services to BA .... for a fee. Kinda says it all really!!
Exactly. What a pompous, self-important article.

I'm all for encouraging BA to improve, and I read the Saturday Guardian most weeks, but that's not the way to do it.

Having said that, I do think the BA CS response, while very pleasantly worded, could have been more specifically focused.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:52 am
  #23  
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Originally Posted by steve_w
So, someone raises some possibly valid criticisms (that tally with my own experience) and instead of some reasoned answers everyone points and laughs because hey, the silly girlie writes freelance for a paper that's not blue in flavour, has a blog and uses twitter?
No. It is rather than the compalint is insubstantial and the fact that it is a journalist making it does not endow it with any additional substance.

If anything, that makes it even weaker as you would expect a journalist to make at least an effort to inform themselves before publishing something and she singularly failed to do so. In this latter respect, it is a bit like a doctor that could not distinguish between colon cancer and a broken foot.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:58 am
  #24  
 
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Originally Posted by steve_w
So, someone raises some possibly valid criticisms (that tally with my own experience) and instead of some reasoned answers everyone points and laughs because hey, the silly girlie writes freelance for a paper that's not blue in flavour, has a blog and uses twitter?

Good grief.

And she's not my friend - just one of the many tech journos I follow for work. I thought there were some valid points for discussion, but instead got this rude ad-hominem response.
Unfortunately she turned the issues into a "what can you GIVE me me me" rant.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:59 am
  #25  
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Originally Posted by steve_w
So, someone raises some possibly valid criticisms (that tally with my own experience) and instead of some reasoned answers everyone points and laughs because hey, the silly girlie writes freelance for a paper that's not blue in flavour, has a blog and uses twitter?
Oh no, I'm not pointing and laughing because of that. I'm pointing and laughing because:
  • blogging isn't journalism - a blogger is just a punter with a blog - and suggesting otherwise is demeaning to real journalists (but at least you didn't link to the Daily Mail, which is where I thought you were going when I read the title!);
  • she is clearly biased towards EasyJet from the start;
  • she expects prime customer service by Twitter
  • she is selling her opinion "at a price" (probably tongue-in-cheek, but poor journalism ... oh wait)
  • she booked flights that would have only scraped her into her destination by a matter of minutes anyway;
  • she quite clearly cannot tell the difference between an airline or the weather being the cause of a problem

and most of all ... most of all ...

  • because she accuses BA of being 'heteronormative' (and tossing in such a god-awfully stupid word without warning is bad enough) because they only responded to one person in the Twitter exchange "even though he and I had included each other in our @s to BA". Y'know, because maybe it would have been reasonable to assume that they were both on the conversation (as indeed they were) instead of pretending it was because BA was making some sort of judgement on her sexual preferences.

In her defence, those standard customer service responses get on my nerves too. They really are indefensible. But by the time I'd waded through her badly-argued case I'd lost the will to care.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 7:59 am
  #26  
 
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Ok here's my humble take on the thread and the journalist.

The OP is asking a relevant question. The answer is "nothing", they (journalists) get the same response as everyone else.
There is no need to go all political and seemingly blame the OP here. All he asked was "what happens".

As for the journalist; DYKWIA of the worst kind. She needs to take a good look at herself and learn to manage expectations. Her letter appears condescending and oozing with entitlement. She can stick to Easyjet for all I know. Bye bye

Lets not close this thread shall we?
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 8:00 am
  #27  
 
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Originally Posted by jasec
I think there is a lot there that resonates if you have ever had to complain about BA services: the responses you get from BA are apalling - as the writer says - responses from BA to complaints almost invariably look like a more or less random set of canned paragraphs put together by some poor individual sitting in a call centre
This does come up time and time again - it is one of the more infuriating facts of modern life: Big companies do not (and I'm not saying cannot) reply to complaints on an individual basis, they pay minimum wage to people who are unable to draft a proper letter, and whack out some standard on-brand management-speak bollocks.

I had a huge delay on a train a while back, the friend I was travelling with and I both wrote to say "you handled that really badly". We both got an identical standardised response, but (probably as many people had complained) the standard had been changed to include some details of the actual incident. This was a million miles better than just "sorry, here's a voucher".

I think BA customer service needs a little sprinkle of imagination in the way it deals with people who complain. If there were weather delays on a certain day it can't be beyond the wit of an IT department to have a quick lookup system to check, and create a bit of text. "I'm sorry you were delayed on date, there was in fact a force 9 gale over South Utsire..."

Either that or shave the monkeys and give them new typewriters.
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 8:01 am
  #28  
 
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Originally Posted by Fruitcake
Exactly. What a pompous, self-important article.
What gives you that idea? I thought most of it was quite reasonable:

Originally Posted by Kate Bevan
As you'll see, there was deathly silence from BA because, despite being a 24-7 business, its Twitter feed is only staffed during UK office hours. Which, frankly, is crap.
Originally Posted by Kate Bevan
I sincerely hope they weren't assuming that we're a couple (we're not, we're mates) because that would be patronising to me and depressingly heteronormative, wouldn't it?
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 8:11 am
  #29  
 
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The person on the other end of it mostly responded to Andy rather than me even though he and I had included each other in our @s to BA. Not sure why that was: I sincerely hope they weren't assuming that we're a couple (we're not, we're mates) because that would be patronising to me and depressingly heteronormative, wouldn't it?
This woman needs to get over herself.

There was a weather delay. If affected LHR and whilst LGW was fine. Wacky things happen.

The foundation of her complaint is similar to saying, "Tesco is terrible! I picked queue 7 and my mate picked queue 9; both having 4 people waiting. My friend finished 3 minutes before me. Not only does this demonstrate blatant sexism (as I am female) but also passive-aggressive tendencies to force lower income shoppers to buy more (as the people ahead of me had more in their basket). Oh, and fluoride contains mind control chemicals. Tesco should be shut down because of the US government's attempt to cover up aliens currently living at Area 51 with the support of Tesco and its queue policies!"
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Old Jul 2, 2012, 8:11 am
  #30  
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Originally Posted by USA_flyer
What a boring piece of writing.
Ditto....no wonder it ended up on her blog.
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