nomadicadventures

Hey guys,

I've been a diehard Emirates fanboy for the longest time, been exclusively travelling with them alone for the last 16 years of my life. Would defend them in any debate even if I knew I was wrong

I remember when Emirates used to stand for ultra high end service in the air.

However... The last 5 years has seen a significant decline in the quality of service. I'm talking about staff attitude, food quality, plane and seat cleanliness...

Most recently, I've had 2 incidents that have really brought me to question my loyalty to them as the service recovery was absolutely atrocious.

1st Incident

I was flying J to Australia on the A380 and as I boarded the plane I noticed that my seat had plenty of food crumbs, hair and some nasty looking stains. I immediately called the cabin supervisor asking him for a new seat and he looked at me all puzzled. With a magic brush of his hand he pushed the crumbs and hair to the ground and asked me what the problem was. I looked at him dumbstruck. I said listen.. I am not sitting on this seat. It's absolutely filthy and for the price I've paid for this "premium" cabin. This is unacceptable especially given Im going to be sleeping on it for the next 13 hours. He huffed and sighed and rolled his eyes and went away looking for a new seat. As he came back he said sorry, we don't have any seats available. I insisted that I would not be sitting on this chair and this man had the audacity to say well I can't help you.. I retorted saying well we can't take off then can we?

The supervisor then goes and finds another passenger to take my seat without explaining why and the poor lady proceeds to sit in my nasty seat while I take hers... I know.. I feel bad but.. 13 hours and straight into a meeting.. (I can be a selfish)

Point being.. Poor service, poor service recovery..


2nd incident..


I was flying to europe in J on the A380 once again..
As I reached my seat and sat down.. The seat cover quite literally flipped.. I sat up to see the seat cover was not fixated and had been ripped off, there was no way to fix it back on..

I call the stewardess, she looks at me puzzled, pushes it in a little bit and says its okay to sit now.. I sit down.. It flips again. She fixes it again and insists its okay.. I said listen.. please call the cabin supervisor. This is unacceptable. She calls him, the gentleman comes and offers to change my seat. I'm irritated but happy I don't have to sit in a broken chair.. Now this is where things get interesting...

1hr later we are still on the ground..Turns out there is a full plane check being done as they have found some fuselage damage.. An hour later we are told that the damage is irreparable and we have to deboard... By this time I am bound to miss my connecting flight at the airport where I land. We are informed that a new plane will be leaving in 5 hours.. No compensation offered.


Final straw

After lodging the complaint for this issue, I have yet to receive a response. I call up emirates and they tell me that the log has been opened but no resolution presented. The gentleman on the phone reiterates that he is being "transparent" with me. He tells me that sometimes when customers complain to much, they don't respond as they know some are fishing for compensation.

I lost it at this point.. I was lost for words..


Anyone else feeling the wrath of Emirates ...... service..

Sorry for the rant.. Had to get it off my chest.

Cheers if you made it this far!

subject2load

Oh dear, this makes for such a disappointing read.

As is so often the case with any consumer-related issues - whether in travel or any other service industry - the original sense of grievance is always multiplied significantly when the recovery process transpires to be either shamefully inadequate (at best) or totally non-existent (at worst).

I cannot honestly say that I myself have experienced anything at this level when flying EK. But I do know that, as a longtime Emirates fan, I would be every bit as annoyed as you if I did.

I can't help but wonder whether the dramatic expansion of EK, in terms of fleet size, staff numbers and route network, have all combined to the point where the standards for which the carrier was originally (and justifiably) known are no longer being maintained with any rigour or discipline.

dwugson

I realize that Emirates customer service has a poor reputation but am amazed that as a platinum member you received such lousy service. I know that the response should be quick and appropriate regardless of status but surely they want to keep their most loyal flyers. Let us know if your complaint gets appropriately acknowledged - your rant is more than appropriate.

pomkiwi

I had a pretty poor experience in F between LHR and DXB last year which I wrote about on here. CS essentially said that I was lying which I found disappointing. At the time I had Skywards Plat. Since then I had a perfectly good trip from LHR to AKL in F and in a couple of weeks I'm off to SYD again.
So nothing to suggest a major issue personally but as a result of last year's experience have taken a couple of trips with LX and QR when going to Africa, thoroughly enjoyed them and don't see me ever getting to Plat with EK again as flight selection is now purely on the basis of schedule and price (with good airlines ) rather than any sense of 'loyalty'.

subject2load

Hi pomkiwi, I think your pragmatic approach (as opposed to 'self-imposed' loyalty or obsession with status) is indeed the way to go.

I happened to fly BA for a trip to the US a little over a year ago. It was my first flight westwards ex UK in quite a while (most of my recent travel has been out east to Asia & Australasia) and then, by an unusual combination of circumstances, I somehow hit Gold fairly quickly with BAEC. But I've become much more of a generic OneWorld enthusiast than a BA-exclusive fan, and have been happy with my experiences on the likes of CX and QR, whose J class I find more than adequate and well-priced (and superior to BA).

I do still value EK's First product and will definitely use them again - not least because I will need to reduce my Skywards balance before long.

steveben53

I dont think that your level of membership be it, blue, platinum or even if you happen to be the Queen should have any effect on the service that you receive. Sadly it would appear, this is not the case

And like Pomkiwi my choice of airline is driven now by price, flight time and schedule (within reason) and if get a better deal on Qatar than I do on Emirates then its Qatar for me - the only loyalty I have now is to my pocket

iRobert

This makes sense if you fly in J or F as status doesn't give you much more perks, if your flying Y it is a different story as the perks of being loyal are an advantage over choosing another airliner.

pomkiwi

Accepted - although with the increasing numbers of paid lounges in many airports the major perk of achieving status (for me at least) can be fairly easily replaced through an annual memebership of Priority Pass or equivalent (although I realise this may not be true for every region).

seiya880

I totally agree with you, as I recently had an really awful experience with EK Customer Service. And I'm a big EK fanboy as well, that's what makes this even worse.

I'm Silver and had the misfortune of traveling from Italy via Dubai to Sydney the day the plane crash-landed in DXB back in August. They delayed both flights, but that was expected. The problem is I had to wait a full week before getting my luggage in Sydney, and it took me god knows how many calls to their awful call center and to the even worse Dnata one to even have them acknowledge the bag was missing.
And it took me even longer to have them to agree to get me a refund for all the clothing I had to buy for the week I went without my bag.

They also recently moved the Italian call center to some other foreign country and this caused a huge drop in quality. Before you felt like you were talking to actual human beings, you could have a laugh with them. Now it's like talking to automatons.

Unfortunately I have to agree with what others have said, it's pointless to put your loyalty in a company that doesn't give a damn about its most loyal customers.

eternaltransit

It's certainly true that Skywards does keep notes on pax because there are those who write in with lots of trivial complaints fishing for "service recovery" (and also once the other side report comes in, there is more than meets the eye to the pax's story).

However, it is unacceptable for that to be communicated to any pax!

In the first situation, I think that was certainly a service failure - an easier way of defusing the situation would be to offer the mattress topper, after brushing off the crumbs etc. with a cloth, rather than hands.

If that reasonable suggestion was unacceptable to the OP and there were no seats in J available, if he refused to sit in it, then I think offloading would have to be the only other option - I'm not sure why other pax should be inconvenienced by having to move seat, given the seat was apparently not fit to be sat in.

Given the bags are in the priority container and it's a long flight, there would be ample time to make up the time during flight.

That said, some recognition of the way the purser handled it poorly would have been appropriate, imho. Potentially some miles unless the OP is a serial complainer (not that I suggest he is!).

In the second case, the OP was moved from a broken seat to a working seat - situation resolved.

The delay caused by fuselage damage I don't think warrants compensation because it happens in air travel, a bit like the weather. No EU261 compensation here! The missing connection is consequential damage - if it's all on one ticket, they would get you to the final destination: that is what travel insurance is for.

Given the OP didn't even end up travelling on a broken seat, then I think there is no situation to compensate.

Wtravel

EK Plat and had an issue once as well when flying A380 in J and where we had to deplane prior to departure due to a technical fault discovered during push back in DXB, and wait 4 hours for a backup aircraft to be brought. EK ground staff were completely incompetent in the process, so I complained to customer service (even the flight and cabin crew were complaining...). Ended up getting some miles, although I didn't ask for any compensation, only wrote in that there is a slightly higher chance they may get it right the next time round ;-)

For me EK remains hit and miss, and I use them accordingly (= when I have to or there is a compelling commercial argument)... As far as "loyalty" goes, IMHO those days are, understandably, long gone by in the airline world, it is a cut-throat commercial environment, and I simply take the same transactional approach the carriers do.

Monarch man

I've said this on other threads on here, and I'll repeat what I'm told again. The issue here is leadership, or lack of in EKs case...crews continue to be worked mercilessly which has the combined effect of fatiguing them and demoralising them. If the travelling public had any real inkling into the punative and toxic culture that is fostered currently at EK they would at the very least re-examine their travelling decisions.
A persons state of mind has a lot to do with how they deal with challenges and adversity which can as has been alluded too leads to escalated levels of frustration and service failure.
Quite simply, if your staff don't care, then the service will suffer.
FYI, at EK the rot is set to continue until there is an admission that all is not well at the shopfront, sadly, in the ME, failure amounts to a loss of face which requires someone below the local manager to be found and blamed...but it doesn't fix the problem.

eternaltransit

This is pretty much the case at most major global airlines (or has been over the years) - FT is full of threads (and always has been) in all forums about how airline service standards have slipped, the toxic management culture and how that affects the front line (which I agree with): yet people (even on FT) still travel with them and the airlines seem to carry on with no major strategy shift.

After all, we can point to BA's mixed fleet minimum-wage fleet, SQ's draconian age and size policy for cabin crew (allegedly you only get one uniform size, ever), all the stories that surround QR's working environment, FR's fatigue concerns, US3 perennial labor disputes (regional airline pilot compensation!), CX's near strike by staff in 2015 over pay and conditions, QF grounding the entire fleet in 2011, etc. etc.

Not to say this excuses any toxic working environment at EK, but I think travellers frankly, do not care about such things - like a theater production, you, the pax, pay for your seat and the production. The audience doesn't care - and I think they shouldn't have to - about the interpersonal dramas of the cast and the production team.

Obviously if there is tension that affects the performance, it shows - but no one is forced to work there.

EK management's main problem (the rot) is the lack of yield, drop in global demand and currency issues, measured against their leveraged business model and capacity ramp-up program - even though staff turnover is high for cabin crew, there are hundreds of applicants for each position.

The main staff concern would be pilot replacement, but then again, if you are an A380 pilot you're pretty much stuck at this point, I think.

avcritic

@ET, in a highly consolidated, capacity controlled domestic US market we don't have a choice other than living with US3 and couple of other LCCs. EK doesn't have that monopoly on any of its routes. We are same as any run-of-the-mill airline is not going to work in the long run.

A330/A340 pilot transition to A380 seems to be executed in the worst fashion possible.

BTT, There is no freaking reason to have a dirty cabin ex-DXB. EK has bloated workforce of 59,000??? less than half are cabin and flight crew. I can understand if an outstation contractor didn't do a good job.

simonoch

Well I guess it's nothing compared with a decade with Emirates, but I fly regulary with them since 3 years. Mostly in J, sometimes in F & Y.
95% in A380.

However, I can certainly say that my opinion on the service & cabin crew is worse and worse. Actually it's a feeling, rather than a list of bad experiences, vexations or facts. I just feel they are getting colder and more condescending each flight. Maybe I get used to the "product". Maybe their A380 are too big to take minimum care of the passengers. Even if I've never expected more than some courtesy and kindness from a staff.

I guess it's becoming more and more industrial. Less and less personal. Crews are probably exhausted as mentioned below.

That's just my personal feeling. It's not a fact

However I like their mileage/loyalty system. The aircrafts are mostly clean and brand new, the lounges very moderns and convenients... At at least you arrive safe at destination Like every other passengers.