Ridiculous excuse for Frontier Website issue
 

Purchased flights back in March of 2010 to fly the family home for the holidays from DFW to MKE. Purchased these tickest from Midwest Airlines on their website at the time.

Fast forward to last month and I now go on to the Frontier Airlines website to check in, (of course they purchased Midwest earlier this year), and despite numerous attempts online to check in I am unable to do so. Ironically, before the system boots me out I am of course able to PAY for the two pieces of luggage I check through on Frontier. Subsequent to the online issues, I then spend nearly 2 hours on the phone to try to get the issue resolved. No luck and am told to go to the counter and get it done. Finally, get checked in there and am told it will not be a problem on my return. Once again, unable to check in online and had to do it at the counter.

I complained by email through the website and received the following LAME excuse


Response (Beth) - 12/27/2010 12:06 PM
Dear Mr. Cupps,

Thank you for contacting Frontier Airlines Customer Relations.

We apologize for the problems you recently encountered on our website with your online check in. Feedback such as yours is invaluable as we work to ensure our customers website experience is the best possible.

In reviewing your reservations there is a Special Service request for a non smoking seats. These requests can prohibit online check in. We apologize for any inconvenience you experienced when trying to check in online and while holding to speak with a reservations agent. The bag fees would not be refunded or waived.

Please be assured, your comments have been forwarded to our Web Design Team for future consideration. Thank you for taking the time to write.

We hope to have the opportunity to serve you onboard future Frontier Airlines flights.

Sincerely,

Beth
Customer Relations Specialist
Frontier Airlines

Forgive me if I am wrong, but haven't airplanes been NON-SMOKING for over 20 years! Why would their system ever have designated NON-SMOKING seats versus SMOKING. With out question the most ridiculous excuse I have ever heard for a failure to accept a reservation online.

Not expecting anything more from this incident given the lack of overall response from Frontier, but had to post this ridiculousness since it was so outrageous.

A relative traveling during the holidays, also booked travel at Midwest experienced the same issue. Frontier was unable to offer any explanation.

Personally, I have booked trips at Midwest and have not experienced any problems during OLCI. I hope you were using your Frontier record locator.

I had the same problem doiing OLCI with tickets I purchased from Midwest. But that respsonse letter had me chuckling... Non Smoking seats. LOL

Wasn't Midwest around before the all together ban on smoking in flight took place? Since Frontier was established after the ban, they probably never had anything in their systems to be able to choose between smoking and non-smoking. I would imagine that no one even thought about it causing in issue when transferring systems over to Frontier.

Never had this problem

While the excuse is silly it is a problem that will become increasingly rare until all of the old Midwest reservations are completed. Was it that big of a deal to check in online? I realize you wanted a quick experience at the airport but 2 hours on the phone seems rather excessive for just checking in. I would have given up and just waited to get to the airport.

You were a casualty of a merged airline. Every merged airline has had the same issue. There were two computer systems, Frontier and Midwest. At some point, the Midwest system was discontinued after merging the files into the Frontier system. However, since the Midwest web site was also decomissioned, you were unable to check-in on the Frontier web system because the website does not recognize other airlines flights (Midwest YX code). It's happened at every merged airline. It had nothing to do with non-smoking seats.

This is a great example of (likely) giving an answer which may have had technical accuracy, but totally failing at properly answering the question.

I'm not saying the original posted asked for a non-smoking seat or that they did anything wrong...not at all. But this might better explain what might well have happened.

It is true that some (or all?) special requests on an itin will force you to check in at the ticket counter. That is on purpose and is reasonable...if for example, at booking you indicate you needed special assistance at the airport, they want to see you at the ticket counter to ASAP figure out if you need a wheelchair, can you walk down the jetway, will you have to climb stairs to board, etc. You can in some cases step through the online check in and pay for bags, but ultimately it will still make you stop at the ticket counter.

I suspect the response was correct, in that there was something on the reservation which said you had a special request of some sort.

When the reservations were converted over from the YX system to the F9 system, they probably had to map over every piece of data. Most likely, in the data conversion process some information got over to the F9 side in the field that said your reservation requested a non-smoking seat. It may have simply been a coding error, or it might have been a case where there was no place to map some data, and they decided to "repurpose" the field called "no smoking seat requested". Here's an example of how this might happen. You know how a number of months back the TSA tightened rules on making people have things like gender and middle names on reservations? If you made your reservation prior to this rule, they make you check in at the ticket counter and input the missing information at check in from your ID. When it came time to move the YX reservations over to the F9 system, they needed to find a way to make those people check in at the ticket counter. The cleanest available way to do this might have been to put a special request on on all those reservations...a special request code no longer used for the original purpose such as 'no smoking seat". Doing this would accomplish the goal of making those flyers check in at the ticket counter.

If that "no smoking seat" field is an obsolete one which doesn't even show up when an agent pulls up the reservation, when the agent assured you they didn't see any reason why you couldn't use OLCI on your return trip, they may not have been able to see that your reservation this code. There are no smoking seats on F9, of coursse, so if that field exists on the database it still might not have shown up for a front-line agent to see it.

I think it's very likely something just like this is what happened -- nothing you did wrong, and something which was done for a reason (or possibly a simple coding error).

The real breakdown, however, was in how the complaint was answered. The level of detail I gave above is probably way too much for a letter of apology. But it's stunning that the person who wrote the letter didn't stop to think that it wasn't reasonable to suggest the flyer requested a no-smoking seat at booking, and that was the cause. Even if the YX site still had that as a choice, and the flyer chose that at booking and didn't remember doing so, it should have clicked in the mind of the letter writer that it would sound absurd.

A more reasonable apology would have instead included something along the lines of "Certain types of reservations booked on the Midwest site, when transferred to the Frontier database, require the traveler to check in at the airport. Please accept our apology for this inconvenience, and know that this is an issue from the transition and will not affect reservations booked on the Frontier website."

Knope,

Thanks for your thoughtful and well written response.

Yes, I am well aware of the fact that the response from the Frontier customer service agent was ludicrous and that the real reason was because of the inability of the IT systems to work together.

However, to the point mentioned in Knope's response I felt that this would be the right forum to share what I thought was a failure in the customer service department at Frontier to at least acknowledge the issue, that a mistake occurred, and that they were sorry about this matter. What I really got from this response is that I, the customer, did something wrong in the process of buying the tickets and therefore it is my fault.

Additionally, I was annoyed by the fact, as I stated in the beginning that their system DID allow me to pay them $40 for the privilege of checking my luggage, but could not check in the people online. This was even more aggravating when on my return from MKE due to the problems that I expressed to the counter personnel of having to check in in person they waived the baggage fee. Yes, I know it is only $40, but given the hassle factor I think they should have agreed to waive this as they did when I checked in personally for the return trip.

Hope that others experiences are better.

I completely agree. The approach was really off the mark from them. Had it been something potentially legit like if the traveler had been an unaccompanied minor that might have been a reasonable explaination, although they still should not have been dismissive in tone. Especially since the system conversion aggrivated (if not downright caused) the situation. But saying it's because you requested a non-smoking seat? That should have raised a red flag.

Much better response from Frontier
 

In providing the full picture and not just my rant at the initial response from Frontier I am posting below their recent follow up. Kudos for them getting it right after the fact and I just may give them another shot.

Response (Customer Relations) - 01/11/2011 09:17 AM
Dear Mr. Cupps:

Please accept my apologies for both the length of time it has taken me to respond to you and for our initial response. We have had, while in the process of integrating Midwest and Frontier, some system difficulties which have resulted in failures of the online check in process. While we believe we have most of those problems corrected, clearly we have a ways to go.

Our initial response was less than helpful and I can see where you would find it insulting. Please know it was not intended that way.

I hope it is not too late for me to attempt to convince you to give us another try. To that end, we have issued an electronic voucher in your name for which may be used to purchase a ticket for travel on Frontier. Your certificate may be redeemed by calling our Reservation Department at 800-432-1359. Please advise the phone agent that you wish to redeem a certificate toward your ticket and provide the following certificate number. Terms and conditions are listed below.

My thanks for your patience and please feel free to contact me at the number below if you have further concerns.

Good for them.

You might want to obscure that certificate #.

+1

Anyone here think that the OP's original message was viewed here by F9 personnel and a contributing factor in the follow-up, apology and peace offering?

I don't know, but it certainly is good recognition, as well as a nice gesture on Frontier's part.

Every experience I've had with Frontier clearly shows me they are going above and beyond to keep the former Midwest customers happy.

My niece recently experienced a four hour mx delay, all passengers were given a $100.00 voucher.

A four hour delay with Midwest normally resulted in a $50.00 voucher.

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