cricketdog

Well, I finally heard back from Emirates Airlines regarding our miserable experience in Dubai. Needless to say, I am even more peeved now. I could not believe what I read! I've fired back a response requesting further research as our problems were supposedly documented in both Duabi and Paris. I also reminded the associate that e-mail is a very powerful tool in the U.S. and that the Doubletree Hotel was likely none-too-happy with the Powerpoint presentation that circulated around a year or so ago about a terrible customer service experience.

Here's the response (don't you just love the insinuation that missing our flight was somehow our fault??):

Dear Ms ,

Thank you for your email message and for the events that you have
described.

I am sorry to learn of the difficulties that you encountered at the
Business Class lounge during your transit stopover in Dubai on 25th
February 2007, when the staff failed to issue you boarding cards for
flight EK075 from Dubai to Paris and you were unable to travel.

I understand from your letter that you had not been issued boarding
cards for this flight when you checked in at Seychelles and the Lounge
staff at Dubai advised you that they would process the boarding cards
and let you know when these were ready. You remained in the Lounge until
thirty minutes before departure when you approached the desk again to be
told that it was too late as the flight was oversold. Our records show,
however, that the flight departed with two empty seats in Business
class.

Unfortunately, on 25th February severe fog caused major disruption and
affected our schedules world-wide. Emirates had eleven flight diversions
earlier that day and, as you have said, the airport and lounge were busy
as many passengers were waiting for their onward connections. We have no
written record, neither is the Lounge Supervisor who was on duty that
day able to recall the incident that you have described.

I can only apologise for any error on our part and am sorry for the
inconvenience this caused. I note that you were re-booked to travel the
following day and were provided with hotel accommodation in Dubai.

I am unable to consider loss of earnings or providing you with
complimentary tickets as you have suggested. However, as a goodwill
gesture, without prejudice or admission of liability, I am able to
consider reimbursement of one night's hotel accommodation in Paris, upon
provision of the relevant receipt or invoice which is required for
auditing purposes.

Thank you for writing to us and for allowing me to respond to your
concerns.

Yours sincerely,


Sharon Hurdiss
Customer Affairs


Any other thoughts to get Emirates to do the right thing???


Thanks for letting my cry on everyone's shoulder! Arrrggghhhh!!

sadiqhassan

What did you request in addition to compensation to the hotel stay? While I do think that the customer service was unacceptable, and that I would probably never fly Emirates again if I were you, I do think the letter is a satisfactory end. They weren't able to put you on the DXB-CDG of the day so they gave you a hotel and put you on the next flight.

It would be nice of EK to offer free tickets on a future flight, but unfortunately EK is very by the book in terms of compensation. They will give you what they have to (even if they describe it as "a goodwill gesture" - what idiots ) but nothing more.

Cheers

UA Fan

Must say I am quite shocked to see so many complaints, I flew them only once and when I wished that they would be late they were on-time. My folks all seem to love EK and we pay only for Y. They signed up with UA just to get miles on EK.

krazykat

Just returned from my trip to Vienna (now in EK business lounge writing with very slow wifi). Apart from a nice trip to the city, the flight was pretty crummy.

Service was ok but the aircraft (A330-200) was probably an old one whereby the sink in the toilet was clogged, seats didn't recline smoothly (the passenger behind me gave me a dirty look when I reclined, jerked and suddenly knocked wine on him), PTV didn't work 100% AND I lost my luggage for the second time with EK in 1 1/2 years!! I wrote to customer service to highlight these but got reply since

On my flight back, I was seated in Y and an EK rep came by and gave me a glass of champagne. That's about it

Now my connecting flight is on J on the new 777W (phew!), looking forward to the "stars" on the ceiling & ICE. EK should seriously look into their baggage handling because ALL my friends have at least once lost their luggage on EK

Fliar

Not a good response - I would be displeased with that too. That insinuating comment 'you stayed in the lounge until 30 minutes before departure' is just too bad.

No surprises there, I'm afraid.

AndyFlyer

I think their letter is very poor. Were they not able to explain why they were unable to issue you boarding passes in SEZ to start with? So much for their seamless customer experience. But they have failed miserably to explain why you were not able to be accommodated on your onward scheduled flight. Lounge staff were just not interested in helping you out (this is so typical of DXB lounge staff...they are too busy and important to help passengers!), and thus you didn't travel! Did anyone rush you to the gate to standby in case a seat was free (at which point the two "free" seats in business would have been yours!)? Did anyone at any point bend over backwards to assist you? Clearly EK are missing the point of your letter - THEY HAVE CRAP CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES IN DUBAI AND DON'T CARE ABOUT IT! Shame on Emirates. I'd take the refund for the hotel, and ask if they would offer you compensation in the form of an upgrade from any Y fare to J on a future EK flight, if they truly value your business.

Good luck!

magmax

As the recent news reports claim EMIRATES is making more and more profit every year. so as a conclusion part of the profit earned seems to be due to poor customer service (badly paid staff, understaffed shifts,...) and greedy compensation handling.

after reading all the bad experiences from all of you i am really anxious to take my first flight (4 segments) with EK this july. I am especially curious as I will be flying on the so often mentioned disreputable SEZ-DXB route where the inital problem happend.

br

tallyho

i think you hit the nail on the head. this problem is disappointingly common in dubai's service organizations (e.g., hotels, restaurants). the only consistently strong service i've encountered there is at the ritz carlton hotel, which has institutionalized strict quality controls and conduct standards globally.

Jacobin777

^

..the only truth which comes out of this is it shows your ignorance and stupidity....^

Billman27

I think Tallyho nailed it on the point. Service in the UAE is really hit or miss. Tonight I just came back from Abu Dhabi where I saw the show Chicago at the 7 star hotel down there, Emirates Palace.

While the hotel is truly impressive, the service is horrible. Staff are uninterested and bothered about having customers. Hardly justifies the 13 dollars they charged me for an orange juice. Mind you the show was great, but that was hardly any doing of the staff in the hotel.

I guess staying motivated for a salary of 500 USD a month is very difficult.





Billman

krazykat

I don't get why Dubai prices rival that of Europe or US when majority of staff are getting paid "third world" salaries??

Jacobin777

..its called "cleaning up house"....

cricketdog

On May 6, I responded back to Emirates' email (see post above with original note from Emirates) and on May 16 (world-record response time for Emirates), I heard back from Ms. Hurdiss again. At this point, I feel like I've lost the energy to fight the battle. It's just not worth it any more. I will never fly Emirates again.

Here is the correspondence between us:

May 6 email from me to Emirates:

Dear Ms. Hurdiss,
Thank you for your response. I am however dismayed at what you have indicated in your note. The business lounge manager and the associate who worked on our accomodations in Dubai both indicated there would be a written record of our problem and that written record would be made available to customer service so our problems could be properly addressed.

I did write down the name of the manager (who supposedly spent an hour getting our flights re-booked) and the associate who finally did assist us in Dubai. Unfortunately, I wrote that information down on the Emirates documents that were given to us in Dubai (my husband's visa information and some of the other flight information). That information was taken from us by the Dubai airport's visa/immigration agent as we exited the Dubai airport. It wasn't until we arrived at the Le Meridien Hotel that I realized the documents, with the contact information, were not with us. If you can go back through your records and find those documents, you can find the necessary Emirates contact information and perhaps track down the actual series of events.

As I indicated in my first letter to Emirates, I did a considerable amount of traveling as a top-tier elite level flyer with Continental Airlines. Never, in all of my travels, have I experienced such a miserable and poorly-treated travel episode. I am not satisfied with the insinuation that we intentionally missed our flight in Dubai. We were told that no seats were available by your business class lounge associate, after 2.5 hours of waiting in the lounge and requesting that our boarding passes be printed!!! Why would we choose to miss our flight and stay another night in Dubai? We did not leave the Le Meridien that night. We had already spent time in Dubai previously and did not care to stay in that city again. Further, you do not address the issue of our re-booked flight to Paris being held at the gate by Emirates as we waited for late-arriving passengers to board, and the fact that this delay caused us to miss yet another flight home -- thereby forcing us to miss a day of work. The revised itinerary booked by Emirates in Dubai would have allowed us to still get home on the originally planned arrival day (albeit still forcing us to incur hotel cancellation charges); however, due to the Emirates delay, we missed our connecting flight (from Paris to Los Angeles), setting off yet another chain of unfortunate events. Surely, you at least have the documentation that shows that flight's delay at the gate, don't you?


Obviously, we are at your mercy. I do not believe the indemnification you have offered is near enough to compensate us for our stress due to an Emirates-caused problem. In the United States, e-mail is a very easy way to spread information about something people find amusing or are unhappy about. Perhaps you are familiar with the Doubletree Hotel presentation that circulated for weeks via email to millions of people. That presentation described yet another miserable customer service experience that ultimately tarnished the imagae of Doubletree Hotel. Here is a link to that information: http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/badhotel.asp

I urge you to reconsider and perform an additional investigation to get to the real story. Do not rely on your lounge supervisor's recollection of what happended to two customers on a day that had eleven flight diversions and was nearly three months ago.

Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

May 16 email from Emirates to me:
Dear Ms ,

Thank you for your email message of 6th May 2007.

I am naturally disappointed that you are unhappy with my response of 19thApril.

As I explained in my letter, there was major disruption at Dubai Airport on 25th March caused by the bad weather conditions. Our operating schedules world-wide were severely impacted.Â. All staff on duty at Dubai Airport, including the staff at the Business class lounge were working under pressure, as thousands of passengers had been affected by the disruption and were naturally making enquiries regarding their revised itineraries..
.
I refer to paragraph three of your letter which suggests that I insinuated that you missed your flight intentionally. I have reviewed the content of my letter and am unable to find text that Â.proposes this. I have apologised for any error made on our part and have offered to reimburse the hotel accommodation that you were unable to utilise in Paris, upon production of the relevant receipt which is required for auditing purposes.

You were re-booked to travel on flight EK073 from Dubai to Paris on 26th February. The departure of this flight was delayed by forty minutes. Fifteen minutes of the delay was due to congestion at Dubai Airport waiting for start-up clearance, 15 minutes was due to a headcount error, and 10 minutes due to the late delivery of passenger baggage to the aircraft. You were provided with hotel accommodation in Paris as the late arrival of flight EK073, caused you to misconnect with Air France flight AF072 from Paris to Los Angeles, on 26th February.Â.

As I have explained, we are unable to consider loss of earnings or offer you complimentary tickets as you have suggested. My offer to reimburse the cost of your hotel in Paris was made purely as a goodwill gesture and cannot be improved upon.Â.

The content of paragraph four of your letter has been noted, however, other than to thank you for writing we have nothing further to add.

Thank you for allowing me to re-iterate our position.

Yours sincerely,

Sharon Hurdiss
Customer Affairs

Singapore_Air

Stubborn woman this Ms. Hurdiss isn't she.

Madefornow

i am just depressed reading your message...this airline boast of World class service, but i am still yet to understand what "World class" means to The Emirates.....oh!! well, i had a smilar crazy experience with EK.....and just to warn future passenger - if u dont receive all the boarding passes for your entire trip, begin to beg God you dont miss a flight or that your bags show up. cos EK is so consistent with this practice...and talking about the DXB airport - thats just cow dump...always dirty...