NJ David...the above quote tells me that YOU don't know for a fact that my statement was untrue. Hearsay is just that. Your friend Ed may have related a tale to you that may in fact have been untrue. I actually can't think of a situation where "dinner" would be involved in doing the right thing for a customer. I know for a FACT that in my almost 20 years at CO that I have NEVER known anyone to be fired for providing legitimate customer service.

99% of the time you would be right. The 1% exception is when you feel that a single individual is critical to the continues success of an organization and by not giving a bonus, you risk losing that individual. In this case (and I'm not saying this is the case at CO), would it be a prudent business practice to *not* give the bonus?

Actually, my deferring to someone else is not due to the "hearsay" nature of my information, but out of respect that another individual may not want too many details of their story to be revealed.

ANYONE at CO that has befriended an elite passenger, and went out of their way to show a little customer service is (by their or CO's decision) no longer there. Startinmg with Steve and traveling down through the ranks. A very sad "the customer is our enemy" business model.

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And as far as the other comments about me above, I have no pictures of Gordo The Liar in my basement, and restrict my comments about him to the appropriate CO forums. I'm well aware of the state of the airline industry - but am not interested in playing the apologists "circular logic game", where everything good at CO is because of Gordo the Liar's efforts, and everything bad at CO is due to the bad industry. You can't switch bank and forth between his sainthood and his irrelevancy just to suit each individual argument. We get this at EWR all the time. For example, we're supposed to thank, praise and give awards to CO for the beautiful new global gateway they struggled to build, but if there's a problem - with the bathrooms or the air conditioning or the staffing - CO whines it's not their fault - we're told to blame the Port Authority . This carp doesn't play anymore with CO or their apologists here.


As I said 2 years ago, time will show the truth. It has and will continue to.

[WAY off topic, doesn't belong here]

[This message has been edited by kanebear (edited 10-24-2002).]

1) I did not say you were a problem. You are a dissatisfied customer (with a reasonable grievance). I am merely countering your position that Bethune doesn't deserve to be rewarded. My point was that your oft-repeated opinion that Gordon is causing "so many" longtime passengers to defect is not borne out by the numbers. CO carries 30+ million passengers per year. There will always be a few like you who are unhappy, and for cause. But relative to its competitors, CO is doing well in overall traffic and in price received. The unhappy few are being overwhelmed by the satisfied many. That's not my opinion, that's what the data shows.

2) I am not employed by Continental. I don't do any business with Continental or any of its subsidiaries. The rest of my economic relationship with CO is spelled out below. I do not know Bethune personally.

3) I have about 80,000 OP miles and I have flown CO on exactly one r/t in the past twelve months (EWR-FLL in coach on a 753, approx. $150). I do have more than 150,000 base miles on DL so far this year and I have been elite on US in the past as well. I was GM on Continental in 2000 via a promotion; by 2001 I was back to no status.

4) I own about 50 shares of CO stock (average cost probably in the high twenties).

5) You have confused Bethune's pizza analogy. The concept is if you take too much off the pizza, you can cut the price as much as you want but no one will want to buy it because it's not pizza. The crust, sauce and cheese are safety, on-time and baggage delivery. Toppings are extra, although the price may change from time to time as the market changes.

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...or passengers swim.

It might be useful if there was a voluntary disclosure of people's relationahip with CO in each message as it happens in some financial message boards where hype and slam co-exist. Avoids everyone accusing everyone else.

Suggested voluntary disclosure tags:

Customer, ex-customer, investor, employee, contractor, consultant, broker

As for myself...
An ex-customer.