Customer Affairs - a letdown
 

On a recent J class trip to Lahore and back to Man, I had the honour of the a380 trip.

Upon getting my meal, I opened the cutlery up and noticed it was disgustingly covered in someone elses chocolate dessert....The spoon bottom was covered and this had also crept onto some of the knife and fork.

I returned it and the crew member was also shocked and apologetic.

After finishing my meal I requested as cappuchino...when the tea spoon came with it, it was covered in dried milk and clearly not washed properly.

I asked for the senior and a complaint was logged.

My return flight again in J from DXB to MAN, also suffered the same situation, except this time I took pics and immediately asked for the purser.

He logged the complaint.

Needless to say no one contacted me despite being requested to.

I happened to chase last week and got the standard acknowledgement.

Today however, I was informed that rthanks for letting us know about this, we are sorry, my file was closed and they simply would feeback to the concerned department.

I feel a little let down...

Any ideas on how to try and negotiate something from them, be it some skyward miles???

Thanks

On my experiance with Emirates, If you want something you have to push for it.

I also think you have to separate what's important and what is not. While I feel for the OP, these things do happen. Cutlery is washed by machines. Mistakes happen.

Is this as bad as a J seat not working for a 14-hour flight? Or missing bags for 48-72 hours? Or being stuck on a flight for 7+ hours (on the ground) with little or no information.

Probably not. Perspective is what is needed. Did the dirty cutlery really ruin your J experience?

And while I think it certainly merits a comment so EK can follow up with their cleaning and maintenance contractors, it hardly warrants any form of compensation.

Just my personal 2 cents worth..sorry if I sound harsh.

Sounds a bit like you might be an apologist for EK, but I wouldn't say that myself.

In my experience, the only thing that will get a decent response from EK (and you will have to send your complaint through several channels) is your status and your status with other airlines, ie your potential business to them.

it cuts the mustard for me, but for others?

Grace B, you can say whatever you like. This is, after all, just a discussion right?

I'm hardly an apologist. A fan? Yes. Make no bones about it. And I agree with you that what gets a response from EK is status - but I've also heard of many stories where HVC's still haven't been responded to.

As far as the dirty cutlery goes, it hardly warrants compensation, especially when the fix was bringing a clean set as soon as the incident occurred. A follow up to the contract cleaners - yes. An apology to the customer. Most probably.

+1

^

Bingo.
Have a look in the AA/BA/QF forum and see what they are having a whinge about...
I'm on eightblack's side; could happen to any airline.


Happens to every airline Grace B.

I would agree. There is nio excuse for dirty cutlery but what happened here pales into insignifance when you consider all the hardship a good many passengers suffered during the "ash cloud" and the recent bad weather which stranded hundreds of thousands of pax in Europe and created a mountain of lost and delayed bags.

I have to agree. If this happened to me, and I were to try to quantify the harm, it really amounts to a couple of minutes of inconvenience while waiting for a replacement set. It's not as if I had anywhere else to go. I would be really hard pressed to do anything but thank the cabin attendant for bringing me the new cutlery and getting on with my life.

It may reflect poorly on the airline, but that's their problem, not mine.

Agreed. Now finding a cockroach in your meal - that's a whole other lawsuit.

I too am no apologist for EK but in my personal experiences on several hundred flights in Biz and F I have never had this happen. I am sorry it happened to you but it is clearly an isolated and small problem that sounds like it was dealt with (by being rectified) promptly. At least they use metal cutlery (flatware) rather than the plastic stuff used by American carriers up until I stopped needing to fly them a few years ago.

Just flown on US AIRWAYS, I would have killed for a bit of chocolate on my spoon :-)

The beef meal they served us with came mixed with bone shaped doggy biscuits and a plastic bowl of water with Fido written on the side.

How I wish Emirates would fly Europe to the States.

I am surprised the head steward/(ess) didnt do much more. Last time in J on a DEL/DXB flight my choice of meal wasnt there, she was very very apologetic ( as i am not a meat eater and the Fish had ran out ). At the end of the flight she gave me a box of Godiva chocolates ( the big box ). I think for these small issues, its best to figure it out at the scene of occurrence.

Would i write a letter for this - no? was i happy - yes !

A mean (that the pax can eat) running out is a whole other issue. Because that's an integral part of the product you're purchasing. Had she instead found you a crew meal, or brought one from F, she needn't have given you chocolates - service recovery would already have been done.

I think similarly, most people feel that replacing cutlery was sufficient service recovery, and didn't warrant a bottle of Moet to go along with it. Now, had they run out of cutlery altogether, that would be a different issue.

I had a similar experience last year flying DXB-ACC. There were exactly 23 hot meals catered for 23 passengers in Business Class. Sitting in row 11, I didn't get my first choice, nor my second choice, nor my third choice and eventually when it came to serving me the vegetarian option that was the only thing on offer, the SFS (who I've flown with a couple times before) showed up at my seat and apologetically informed me that an Arab passenger in row 6 had gotten very upset on tasting his fish meal and demanded a substitute - so they had now run out of all hot meals. He offered to see if they could put together something from Economy for me (no pax in First so no catering available from there), but they were also catered exact numbers and that didn't work out. So I had to go hungry. Disappointing since I had skipped breakfast at the lounge that morning, but hardly worth writing to customer affairs about. What realistic restitution could they provide? Send me a meal by courier? Stuff happens.