Thursday, January 05, 2012

A grovelling apology

Back in May when we went on our cruise we experienced Heathrow Airport’s ‘special assistance’ service.

John briefly mentioned some of the problems we’d had in May 20th blog ‘A tale of three airports’. However that wasn’t the end of it. You can read a full account of the farce in ‘Our cruise – part 1’ and ‘Our cruise – part 3’ over on my Joint Journal blog (just click on the link at the side of the page).

I sent a Customer from Hell letter to Heathrow’s customer service manager and received a holding ‘we are looking into your complaint and will get back to you within seven day’s’ letter.

Seven days came and no reply. 14 days came and no reply. 21 days came and no reply. I think you can see where this is going…..

What with one thing and another I’d forgotten about it. It was only when I was sorting through some old correspondences in December that I saw the letter.

I must have been in a bad mood because otherwise I would have just shredded the letter and marked it down as ‘good Heathrow’s customer service’. Instead I did a bit of digging on the internet and found out that the ‘special assistance’ service was operated by a private company.

A letter, enclosing a copy of my original letter and the one I’d received from Heathrow, was sent to the chairman – in Atlanta, America.

As I’d sent the letter on 7th December I wasn’t expecting a reply, if any, until the new year. At 4.45pm on Friday 23rd December I received a phone call from the general manager of Heathrow’s ‘special assistance’ service regarding the letter I’d sent to their chairman.

Boy was he grovelling !!!!!

He assured me that when we next travel our experience of their ‘special assistance’ will be better than last time, and as a way of an apology he would be sending me some flowers.

The flowers duly arrived and they were lovely.

A good job well done by the Customer from Hell…..

Marie

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