Whenderson

This is more of a rant, but just hoping someone in Iberia management reads this...

I flew RAK-MAD-LHR in Business last week.

Because of a late take off from Marrakech, I missed my connection at Madrid.

Now things go wrong in travel, it's how it's handled that matters.

There was one help desk near gate S19 with one man manning it who seemed on the point of having a break down. A passenger had left a ticket wallet on a chair and when I put in on his desk and let him know he screamed at the top of his lungs "I don't want it, take it away" till he seemed on the point of crying.

I tried to get my ticket changed in the Business Lounge but the women behind the desk refused to help.

Another help desk was miles away at Gate 30 and similarly busy to the first one but at least the woman here seemed calmer.

There was a long line but you could push a ticket-display button if you were in Business, which I did and was seen after about 3 people.

The woman who helped me clearly couldn't care less, and was going to make me take a flight the next day (this was about 2pm) until I asked her to get me on a BA flight later which, after much pushing by me, she eventually did.

I'm an Emerald One World passenger and definitely not from the "do you know who I am brigade" but shouldn't top tier loyalty mean something? Even if you aren't a frequent flyer you could hope for a basic level of politeness.

I was shocked by how few staff Iberia had at its help desks, and the attitude of those who were there.

I know it's easy to say "never again" but I was due to fly Iberia to Argentina next year and am now going to go BA for sure.

Like I said, I know this is more of a vent, but come on Iberia...more staff at your help desks please and maybe some customer service training for the ones that are there?

craigthemif

You had a bad experience and met somebody having a bad day (probably due to dozens of people screaming at him all day long). However just ask anybody dealing with BA during the current strikes how much better that is going for them...

Some of the "world's best airlines" - ME3, TK, etc. - are notorious for having shockingly bad IRROPs customer service.

By all means avoid IB if you must, but your problem was hardly unique to IB.

nancypants

I didn’t have a great experience with IB either as a OWE, my feeling is they see their own elites but not any other oneworld elites

however I must say the one and only thing that went smoothly was the irrops rebooking process- my new flight details were emailed to me before I even boarded my delayed flight which caused the missed connection. Boarding pass reprinted in the lounge, Bob=uncle, fanny=aunt and on my way

Whenderson

Hi Nancy - wish I’d had your luck. The two women in the Business Lounge point blank refused to help me. No chance of printing new boarding pass etc even though I saw them do that for someone else later.

Whenderson

Hi Craig - but my whinge wasn’t about other airlines, it was about Iberia.

Several differences with BA, who, blimey, I’m not defending in the least but (a) at Heathrow they seem to have adequately-staffed help desks within Terminal 5 and (b) have additional staff who can help with problems such as rebooking within the First and Business lounges, as well as the meet and greet staff when you first enter, whereas Iberia only had the latter who were 100% not interested in helping an Emerald OW member even though I was talking to them in Spanish.

maball

Sorry but IB staff dont need a bad day as an excuse to be extremely difficult in the way they deal with people who pay their salary

speed.skater

True.

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I do think IB handles delays poorly, though. I'll add another story. That was earlier this year.

Inbound on IB metal to MAD delayed. I was in J, connecting to IB long-haul in J. I merely have mid-tier status with OW. A couple of other pax were on the same feeder and long-haul flight, but ticketed in Y.

I asked the cabin crew on the feeder about the delay. They said there shouldn't be a problem (despite me pointing out explicitly my connection was from T4S).

- Nobody awaited us at the gate with a trolley, bus, or something (despite the fact that we had a fairly long walk both in T4 as well as in T4S). Nobody interacted with us in any way.
- We got to the S gate in T4S all sweaty around a minute or two after the door closed. They didn't wait for us. The gate staff wasn't very friendly and certainly not proactive in informing us about how to proceed.
- The help desk we went to closed about 15 min after we got there (before it was my turn as the sole misconnecting C pax and perhaps the only OW Sapphire--that was my impression from chatting with the other pax). And yeah, I drew a number for C pax. But at that point, they were handling people by line, not by number.
- So we had to walk all across T4S to the help desk which is open late.
- About 30 min after misconnecting at the departure gate in T4S, I received SMS and emails from IB, apologizing for the delay and informing me that I'd been rebooked. I had network all the time, that messages should have been sent like 45-60 min earlier.
- They rebooked me on BA, with a transfer in LHR. Delay at the destination would be around 20 hours.

Now, on the plus side, the help desk staff which I got to speak to shortly thereafter was helpful. I requested to be rebooked on ST, which they did, bringing down the delay to around 12 hours.

They offered me a hotel room in an NH. Not an optimal solution given it was past midnight and my outbound flight to AMS was departing at 6 AM. But alright, what else can they do.

Overall, I've had worse handling of IRROPS but still, that was below average, I'd say.

schrodingerdog

The people working for IB are paid little more than peanuts for a very stressful customer service job. This is not an excuse at all, but it helps to explain the attitude. Most of IB staff could not care less about customers, as the company that employs them could not care less about them.

Is sad, and a bad business policy, but it works (for the moment)

more4less

Unfortunately this happens in almost every business now