eternaltransit

I think describing my post as a speech is overdoing it - after all, if you look at my post history, I think the consensus is I am more of a lecturer rather than a orator However, I certainly recognise the rather pointed subtext of your comments to me and think I need to reply to them directly.

You mention that I "in no way addressed EFV's comments of fixing the problem". However, I was in fact, not commenting about the technical issues at all, as I realise these things need time to be resolved and as Dave Noble rightly says in 45, expecting it to be fixed instantly is I think an unreasonable expectation.

I was instead commenting on the way the thread has developed, and the company's interaction with its customer base - and my post was intended to raise gently and circumspectly the point that EFV may have unnecessarily antagonised some customers through the manner of his/her replies, which I think could be more tactfully handled.

We shouldn't forget that EFV is not an ordinary member of this forum, but is a representative of Experflyer - he/she is indeed speaking for the company and those comments reflect on the company and its reputation.

Let's go over what exactly happened in the thread:

- OP asks if there's a glitch
- EFV replies: "The glitch is with EK. As noted on the AS forum, if you do an award search on the Qantas website you'll see that EK award flights are missing from there as well. The inventory shown on the Alaska site is phantom and largely not bookable."
- 7 most posters reply with their experiences that contradict EFV's statement and some express dissatisfaction and their indication that they will cancel if this isn't resolved

Now, I think this is perfectly civil and acceptable - people threaten to move their business from airlines and share negative experiences all the time on FT. Posters regularly use extremely frank language when describing their experience with various companies, and others reply with their thoughts and experiences. This is the essence of Flyertalk. I don't think this either "arrogant" or "nasty" so far.

- in post 13, EFV replies with:
"I guess no one tried a search today, but this was fixed last night, somewhere between post 8 and 9:" quotes a result and ends with "But thank you all for not panicking or assuming the worst and giving us a few days to look into it."

This is, I think, the first post in the entire thread so far that could be construed as a rather arrogant and sarcastic response by some. By saying "I guess no one tried a search", a reasonable implication is that customers are complaining about something that's already fixed and the problem is with them and not the company. To top it off, the closing statement, given the fact it had only been a day since the OPs started the thread with the ensuing discussion, is clearly an ill-tempered, sarcastic reply attacking the perceived complaints and threats to cancel (subtext: it looked as if EFV was mocking the posters complaining for being hysterical).

To compound this, further posts indicate that customers had actually tried searches and had the same issue.

- EFV in post 17 then asks for specific examples, and invites people to try their own example.

This may have been poorly worded, but his/her goodwill by this point had taken a knock from the tone of their previous post in 13 - and so people reply with their comments as well.

-stargold voices concerns in a perfectly civil and polite way that EFVs responses could be seen to be rather antagonistic in nature
-other posters believe that the crowd is becoming "difficult" to paraphrase, and that might discourage EFV from interacting with the community in future
-EFV replies to some posters directly and indicates that FT is not Expertflyer's support forum and asks posters to email them directly with concrete examples they can work with.

This, I think, is perfectly reasonable but EFV needs to make a decision about what exactly their interaction role is here - is it to be a member of the community and to discuss the product and relay what's going on, or is it to be a more official extension of customer service (in a similar way to major companies and their social media teams on say, Twitter)?

- post 33 is back with an update and this, I think, is the tone of post that some were expecting, succinct and polite

- post 37 however, I think is where the line blurs again between being a point of customer contact and someone more closely involved with operations. There is a polite reply to m3red but saying:

"You're comparing two different things and expecting them to be the same. Airlines can make inadvertent changes that what data is available thru different channels, so we are writing the code to get the data thru a different channel, and as previously stated, we will let you know when it is available. B

is a cardinal sin in the customer support world - you don't tell customers what they are doing wrong directly or what they should be doing, even if they are idiots. It is not very tactful - and this is what I was writing about, this unnecessary antagonism. Also "but if you happen to have technical knowledge of airline reservation and GDS systems that you think would be beneficial, feel free to share via email." could be construed as a thinly veiled insult, given the fact this is a general forum and it's not expected that posters would have that kind of knowledge. As much as you might despise your customers (and I work in the hospitality business and so deal with boorish customers on a regular basis), you don't make veiled insults at them if you want to retain business - that's one of the core principles of professionalism.

-EFV reiterated: "Also, as we stated in our last post Quote:
We would also appreciate that if there is an issue, that one doesn't assume what the issue is, how our systems work, the status of any particular piece of information on ExpertFlyer, or who is at fault"

In an ideal world we would all be rational, patient and understanding. Unfortunately, in the real world, customers will make all sorts of these assumptions and base their complaints upon that, as they are spending money. That is the way of the world - especially as the actual way things work is usually a guarded secret, especially in technology. It is the job of customer service staff to tactfully defuse these things without losing business.

- post 38 states that he got a response via email quickly, but the "few weeks" timeframe indicates to him that EF doesn't take this seriously enough.
- EFV in post 39 replies to this in a civil but defensive manner, which combined with previous posts is seen by other posters as arrogant

How is it defensive? Firstly, arguing with customers. ("How you can you determine "misplaced priorities" without knowing what our priorities are?").

Posters here with complaints see themselves in a customer-supplier relationship, but the official voice of the supplier is replying as if just another peer on the community forum. Customer-supplier relationships however, generally have an unequal dynamic and arguing with a customer (even though you as the supplier may be right) is not good for a situation such as this.

Secondly, speaking in a condescending manner to a customer: "Also, you don't know the development effort involved or how long it might take, the solution isn't quick or simple, and I'm sure you rather we take the time to get it right the first time." It may be factually correct, but not expressed in the most mollifying manner - and so unnecessarily antagonising.

To put it another way, in your own words in fact: I'm sure evilbrain appreciated EFV talking down to him/her, I'm sure that will make their replies happier in the future.

There are much more tactful, humble (especially as EFV was incorrect about the issue being fixed previously) and neutral ways to reply to post 38 stating exactly the same information. For example, they could have written:
"evilbrain, please be rest assured this issue is our top priority - the fix is next up in our development queue and we say a few weeks out of an abundance of caution: we don't want to over-promise and under-deliver! We don't expect it will take that long, but the solution is unfortunately not quick and simple and we would prefer make sure to get it right the first time instead of having a drawn out series of fixes"

There - the point about priorities replied to and the company's explanation that the fix is not easy all stated without any negativity.

Which brings us to the where we are at the moment. EFV, in my opinion, oscillates between being an official company mouthpiece and an individual, a peer in the community, who jumps right into the debate without carefully crafting each statement to ensure the company is represented in the best possible light.

As ukdoctor said, an email explaining the situation would have been perfectly fine and not caused any hassle like this.

You state at the beginning of your post that: "Who are any of you to pretend you know the workings, technical or otherwise of EF better then EFV?" - and from that basis lambast posters for being unreasonably impolite to EFV. Politeness, I think, is a separate issue - as Dave Noble says, we must all be courteous to each other. But the essence of that point is that posters shouldn't jump down the throat of EFV because we don't understand how EF works.

The debate here is, however: should customers really care how EF works and how understanding should they be? Isn't the point of paying a company for a service is for the service to be delivered and nothing else? Should customers care how the systems work, how information is delivered to ExpertFlyer - does knowing all that minimise the fact they aren't getting what they signed up for and thus no use from their product? Are customers not allowed to feel frustrated at that - or should the understanding of all the factors involved in the issue make the fact that customers are paying for impaired functionality tolerable?

Like I said - lecture and discussion style posts, not speech posts, are more my writing style

Dave Noble

There seems to me almost a desire to read some of EFV's posts in a negative way

The comment about "not having tried today" I read as an indication that it was fixed that day ( which as it happens is indeed incorrect ) ; perhaps it would be preferred that EF should simply stop posting such things publicly and stick to private communications to avoid potential misunderstandings.

EFV may be representing the company, but if a customer decides to start publicly accusing of misplaced priorities and that a few weeks to fix is unacceptable, then can expect a public response .

I can understand dissatisfaction at the loss of functionality - it impacted me recently and it was only due to deducing that there was something wrong with EF showing no availabilty for all of next week that led me to checking with EK directly. If I hadn't realised that something was likely wrong with the EF display , I could have missed out on upgrading a flight

The EK forum is not the EF public communication forum and surely such discussions should be in the appropriate location

Even so, whether acting privately or as a company , there is no reason to discourtesy to either side

Nickolash27

Thanks for the lecture. It's not appreciated from you or anyone else. Last time I looked, it was me who decided where to put my money and how I judge service or lack of it, not you. Try reading your own post and see how it comes across.

HB7

Very classy pete4212. Resorting to calling members of this forum d**** and arrogant. And not even realizing how it comes across.

I'd sit here and explain how your response was out of line and factually incorrect - but I'd be wasting my time as I think it would be well beyond your level of comprehension.

m3red

Enough sniping please its not constructive and against the rules of the forum.

I'd just like the issue fixed as I exclusively fly EK and need some J to F upgrades. EF is a waste of time otherwise.

eightblack

Yes agreed, lets leave the personal attacks and general school yard name calling out of it.

pete4212

Not the case at all. On the Consolidated Emirates (EK) awards availability/booking/routing thread thread it's noted when the award inventory is first removed that whatever AS is showing is not bookable:

and the reply:

So it's clear that there were reports of the AS inventory being phantom, at least initially, when the issues started a couple weeks ago. If EFV read that it would have been easy to conclude that whatever EK did affected all outlets of EK award data, not just the GDS/EF. Even if EK later fixed the AS award inventory, at the time EFV wrote that AS was reporting phantom inventory, it was a correct statement.

So if that's the reason you guys have been nastily accusing EFV of lying then you owe them an apology.

DYKWIA

You do realise that this is the EK forum, and most people are not interested in AS reward availability?

What has AS showing phantom availability got to do with EF not showing availability to the people that have paid for their service?

eternaltransit

I don't think anyone here is accusing EFV of lying - in fact, this side discussion is not really concerned with the accuracy of any of the statements by posters about whether the service is working for them or not, it is a discussion about whether the tone adopted by EFV in their responses to customers might affect people's views of the company, given they are an official representative of Expertflyer.

When you say "not the case at all" - that would be (have been - given the issue is now acknowledged and a fix is in the works) a reply more usefully directly at the posters whom I was simply re-quoting from page one as part of the narrative explaining the context of how we've got to this minor acrimony about EFVs replies to customers.

Unless you feel that I quoted them inaccurately - but I think it would be too much text even for me to requote them all verbatim!

pomkiwi

This morning I have been unable to get seat maps for Emirates flights (specifically DXB-MEL on several dates in the next 7 days, LHR-DXB and vv on Friday 30th). Seems as though the problems are worsening, I am however still able to get flight availability for EK using either the USA or UK as point of sale.

pete4212

Yes I do realize that. The point was that if EK partners, like AS and QF, initially had a problem showing EK award inventory as well, then it wasn't an EF specific issue to start and EFV wasn't making stuff up when noting that fact. But you seem more interested in being angry and assigning blame, so you might have missed that.

The only things that are worsening are the assumptions and conclusion jumping. I had an issue this morning with searches of many different airlines on EF, I emailed them and they responded:

And indeed EK and other airline seat maps are back to normal. No sky falling today.

pomkiwi

Note the use of the word 'Seems'. I wass just reporting my experiences at the time. Don't recall suggesting the sky (or anything else) was falling.

I fail to see what is wrong with sharing experiences when a paid for service is not delivering what is expected or what it did previously.

m3red

Any clue on when this is going to be fixed?

DYKWIA

Me, angry? You wouldn't like me when I'm angry...

So what if AS/QF has issues? We don't pay them money to search. I know very well that EF will have issues when their 'providers' change. If EFV had just apologised and said "we're working on it", then fair enough. It was the sarcastic tone against people who mentioned the issues that wound some people up.

Anyway, I put my money where my mouth is and didn't renew (yet!).

sophus

After a few emails back and forth, EF as a one-time courtesy added a couple weeks to my subscription. On the EK issue EF said they are working with their information provider to fix the issue and expect it to be resolved within the next few weeks.