Shop at KLM
 

So, before I flew out on this trip, I ordered a bottle of Flying Dutchman cocktail for delivery on my flight back from Jakarta.I subsequently changed my flight, covered elsewhere, so wrote to [email protected] to advise them.

I got a MOST unusual reply.
"Thank you for contacting us. In order to handle your case sufficiently, could you kindly provide us with the following information: What kind of action do you want me to take. I do not understand your email could you please profit me with more information. Thank you. "

Kind regards.

I personally would have thought the action was obvious, make sure the bottle is on the new flight, or cancel my order. Am I wrong ?

Is that reply a product of artificial or human intelligence?

Johan

well yes, but I suppose they want to know which one of these actions do you want them to take?

Besides that, I see two other plausible actions they could take. Either have it delivered to your home instead, or have someone else on your original flight accept the delivery.

Pretty sure it's an AI response, and of course my preferred course of action would be to have it delivered on tomorrow night's flight. I'll report back on Saturday, when I get home.

And with that, an email arrived.

"Thank you for contacting us.

We can not change your order to another flight, we will refund the amount within 14 business days.

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Kind regards,"

Wow, what a great service from a so-called premium airline.

Possible explanations here...

The Flying Dutchman cocktail (or alcohol in general, I believe) must be delivered on a flight. It's not eligible to be shipped to an address. Furthermore...

The problem here is that it seems to take KLM some time to get any duty free goods purchased online arranged to be delivered on eligible flights. If your flight was "tomorrow night" at the time you wrote that, then they would have had to get it "tonight's" (relatively speaking, since I know this is now in the past) KLM flight to Jakarta, or wherever you are beginning your return leg from. I'm guessing they weren't able to do so in a sufficient amount of time, or the flight you wanted it delivered on was not eligible for the delivery of duty free alcohol, or something like that.

Yes, I gave them 3 or 4 days notice, but it was too short. The senior purser came before take off and asked if I had purchased anything for delivery, and I explained what had happened. Sure enough, she soon confirmed that the bottle hadn't been loaded onto the outbound leg, and was therefore not available. If it had been possible to deliver it onto my KLC flight from Amsterdam to Humberside, then it would have been easier, but of course, it isn't possible on flights of less than 90 minutes.

Yeah, there's a surprisingly amount of logistics involved in getting a specific product loaded on a specific flight, unfortunately. The page does say that for inbound flights to KLM, you can order up to 48 hours in advance. I'm curious whether KLM had another reason why it couldn't arrange it on this particular flight for you. But it wouldn't have been possible to get it on your KLM flight to Humberside anyways. Per the product page:

So, at least until Brexit, you couldn't get it on that flight regardless of flight length.

In which case, it seems like making a new order for the new flight would have been the simplest solution...