Terrible Experience in Business Class with Eva Air
 

Following up on the thread of internal crisis on Eva Air and their inflexible attitudes. I agree and I should explain my recent horrible experience with them.

I fly to/from Asia 3-4 times a year from Europe in business class. As a Star Alliance Gold flyer I thought I would give Eva Air a try for the first time and it was a truly horrible experience. (And I pay for my own flights - not rewards or corporate account).

1. Broken Seat from LHR-BKK which also wouldn't recline automatically. Basically informed on boarding with a "well that's just too bad" attitude by local groundstaff at LHR.

2. Horrible onboard service, basically flight attendants couldn't care less. Wasn't a slight dysfunction. To lower or raise seat, took two or three flight attendants about 5 minutes to lower into sleeping or reclining position. What would have happened had there been an emergency situation or significant turbulence?

3. Was told that I would get some "discount vouchers" when I landed in BKK. Offered USD 200 in vouchers off a new BR booking (about 11% of the price of a business LHR-BKK flight).

4. I refused saying compensation was too low, as comparable compensation by UA/LH when this happened was significantly more. Was told that someone would call me on arrival to my final destination. Eva Air never called.

5. I called the local BR office a few weeks later, to explain politiely what happened and request that either BR refund a portion of my flight around USD 800 or so or provide me with that .amount of credit Basically said USD 200 is all they offered and that was final.

The whole on board, and on ground both before and after was horrible. I simply won't ever fly BR ever again if I can. There is a lot of competition to/from Asia on the routes I fly (and I seldom actually go to Taiwan).

The attitude of BR from everyone I spoke to at BR was very inflexible, a very much "f***ck you there's nothing you can do". Rather than "Ok, here is a valued fare paying customer in C, things went wrong as they sometimes do. But let's retain him if we can".

So I will take my business elsewhere in future. I don't think I have had as terrible experience with any other airline. I understand seats get broken now and again, but it's the attitude of the airline around it that matters. And Eva Air was simply appalling on and off the ground.

I usually find Asian airlines great. I've flown every other Star Alliance airline in Asia (TG, CA, NH, OZ) plus Korean Airlines, China Airlines (which is Taiwanese) , China Southern and China Eastern (Sky Team) as well as Japan Airlines and Cathay (One World) and they have been all good or great experiences.

Eva Air. Never again. What an appalling airline.

I've never thought of BR as a great airline and I do think they should offer more compensation than $200. That said, are you really declaring that a seat that merely would not recline automatically, and that you had to wait for staff a whole five minutes to manually change, made for the most terrible flying experience you have ever had? You haven't expounded at all on the ground experience so it's difficult to imagine what could have been so poor, and I'd simply caution against assuming Japanese airlines like JL/NH would have responded more positively since BR is run very much like a typical Japanese company.

Yes - I do think it's the worst service from any airline I've experience. I've experienced broken seats before, and there has been decent compensation (about 40% of the airfare) and the airline has been apologetic and has treated me well in a manner that suggests it would like to retain my business.

I did describe the on ground experience - see points 1, 3, 4 and 5. Both in London, in Bangkok and then my final destination. Eva Air demonstrated that they didn't care and were curt to the point of rudeness. They simply repeated the line "USD 200 is all we offer."

When I pay for a business class ticket, I expect a fully functional seat. I do not pay for a broken seat and having to call the flight attendants to fix it (and generally like flight attendants there is a delay because they're busy doing something else). If I want to fly with a minimum of comfort and significantly more hassle I'll buy an economy seat.

In the rare event that a fully functional seat is not provided, I expect to be fairly compensated and the airline to treat me well and with a sympathetic attitude as befits someone who is contributing to their profits by purchasing a business class seat. Eva Air did not do this.

So they saved some short term compensation for a paying business class customer. But they have lost my business (probably 10s of thousands of US dollars over the medium term).

I will not fly Eva Air again. And I will encourage others not to fly Eva Air either.

Anyone know the broken seat compensation on NH/JL/SQ? In general, I find UA to more generous with compensation related issues than BR/NH/SQ. Although I've never had a broken seat, UA seems to do better for things like compensation for broken WIFI and the entertainment system.

Many airlines seem to be very poor at compensating for broken seats (meaning truly broken seats, not just ones that wouldn't recline automatically). I recall reading on FT that even some well-regarded airlines like CX offered as low as $250 for a truly broken seat in F, and IIRC UA doesn't offer that much more. Personally, I think the compensation should be much higher in these cases as a lie flat seat is a key part of paying for J/F.

FWIW, I once flew LHR-SFO on UA in paid GF as a 1K and my IFE was inop for the whole flight and I didn't even get a response from 1K Voice. So IME UA certainly does not seem necessarily better in these situations. I also recall a particularly bad TPAC that several FT'ers were on which had no cabin power for most of the flight (so no IFE, seats couldn't be automatically adjusted, no lighting, no power for pax mobile devices) and the offered compensation was a total joke.

EDIT: Here's the thread re: the UA flight. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...ard-fters.html
Compensation was reported as merely $125 for general pax, $200 for 1K.

I've got plenty of broken seats and never got much of compensation, should I go write a rant post on each airlines forum?
AF: seat stuck in reclining position during a whole 15hr flight and IFE broken, got 500 miles...
SQ: J seat wouldn't go to fully recline position, got nothing. No one bowed their heads to the ground! Unacceptable!
LH: J seat would need assistance from 2 flight attendants for 2min to go back to seat position each time needed, got nothing, they didn't apologize profusely! What a travesty!

You just come across as posting a rant after you didn't manage to extort as much as you hoped from an airline.

And this is the reason why I have to stay away from FT every so often

In comparison. Two days ago my seat on Qantas would not recline at all. I noticed as soon as I boarded in Melbourne. I informed the flight attendant and she immediately called for engineering to come on board (Sunday morning). He did his magic, left the plane, doors closed and we were off - all fixed. Granted - in your case EVA air was not at their base.

I'm sorry to hear about your broken seat.

BR rarely gives compensation of any kind. Your USD 200 would've required the station manager to sign off and report it to TPE. Had you wanted more, you would've had to have contacted TPE and plead your case there.

Is $800 a good deal business class fare or better than that?

It depends on the route, etc.

If i’m reading correctly (and it’s early here so I may not be), the fare paid was more like $1800 ($200 apparently being 11% of the fare paid), $800 (~40%) being the preferred reimbursement for limited seat function

I guess the OP literally thinks that business class is 60% soft product and 40% hard product

Did I miss where the OP talked about anything not related to the non-functioning seat?