"Evicted" from Mint Studio -- the official thread!
 

My wife and I were the victims of a last minute equipment swap, and went from the new studios in 1A/1F (which we paid a $400 premium to select) into 3D/5F on an old Mint plane. Didn't even find out about it until we got to the gate.

Incredibly disappointing, as we chose a stopover in LAX for the express purpose of trying the new suites, rather than fly direct. B6 customer service has been surprisingly unapologetic.

Figured I'd start the thread for others to commiserate -- this is bound to come up again with future equipment swaps now that B6 is charging such a significant premium just to select those front two studios. I understand that these things happen, but to make no attempt at service recovery (and to try and keep our money!) is really egregious.

Dispute the $400 on your credit card? It seems like you have a pretty good case.

Obviously they should refund the premium without a hassle, but what do you mean by they "made no attempt at service recovery"?

I would consider a service recovery attempt to be a travel bank credit (even a small, symbolic one), TrueBlue points, etc. Even a sincere apology (as opposed to being defensive about equipment swaps not being their fault) would have been nice.

After filing the chargeback with Amex, they quickly backtracked and stated I would receive a refund back on my credit card in 2 weeks. We'll see. I'm keeping the fraud dispute open in the meantime.

Anyone else been evicted from their studio?? :)

yeah i feel like airlines can swap aircrafts ad nauseum and hide behind "oh theres nothing we can do"

They can, but it becomes particularly egregious when there's such a huge premium to select the studios, and they really need to be proactive in apologizing and reaccommodating those folks. For example, we should have received priority to be put in the throne seats, rather than separated and in the aisle seats in the back of Mint (both seated next to strangers).

i mean when this happens, i assume its computers doing the reassignments and not humans taking into account whos on reservations, traveling with children, spouses, etc...

This gets to my other point. From talking to others, it seems the "regular" Mint passengers were automatically reassigned seats; however, the two of us in the studios were simply unassigned, and as a result, had to take the last two available seats.

I'm wondering if this is because of how the studio suites are essentially treated as a different product at booking, and therefore when an equipment swap happens into an old Mint plane, the computer simply leaves the seats unassigned since there are no equivalent replacements.

Did you speak to gate agents, regular phone agents, or mosiac phone agents. I've found Mosaic Agents have more power to fix this. Case in point i got equipment swapped from a Mint plan to a regular plane. (In advance) They refunded the cost difference plus gave us $500 in travel bank per person.

Spoke to gate agent, regular phone agent, and chat "supervisor". They said the official policy is that they don't give travel bank credits for equipment swaps of any kind.

It's almost like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. This has always been the case, but holy crap has it gotten worse

I could be wrong, but I believe the travel bank credit was awarded due to being forced out of a mint seat into a regular seat, not because of the equipment change. The OP remained in a Mint seat and was refunded the premium he paid for a studio.

Completely agree, but B6 is hardly proactive... its Call Center is a disgrace and the few times I have submitted complaints, the responses from Customer Care have been highly dishonest.

An equipment swap isn't really their fault. There is so much going on behind the scenes it's incredibly hard to ensure that things won't change. It stinks that you paid a premium to fly in those seats, but especially when they don't have a ton of aircraft with those types of seats, it can be a bit of a crap shoot.

All they need to do is refund the $400 and then you're even. It's not like you've been inconvenienced in any way.

The refund process so far appears to be OP needing to open a credit card dispute to get B6 to even offer it after talking to multiple employees across different teams. That sounds like a pretty big inconvenience.

Also, if what OP experienced is how B6 handles it (an aircraft swap means what's technically the highest cabin becomes the last seats to get assigned and therefore split up), that is a decent inconvenience. At the very least they should be the first ones reassigned and put into the solo seats across the aisle from each other or at the very least sat together in a pair.