A tale of (first world) woe.
It seems, in one sense, incredibly crass to be complaining about flights and holidays whilst people are starving, dying, suffering and struggling to pay bills. I nearly didn't write this post.
At the same time, the commercial world does carry on and it also seems unfair to not call out poor or incompetent service when we've paid.
So, here goes ...
For our family holiday I asked my daughter to book the flights for herself, her brother and her cousin. She did so but unfortunately booked the flight for her cousin in her nickname, rather than her full name.
So, come the day of travel Swiss Airlines at LHR refused her carriage ... despite the fact that the signature in her passport is actually clearly legible and written is her nickname.
So, seems somewhat over-officious given that she could be clearly identified and the airline staff admitted it was their judgement call to make. However, can't really complain too much since those are the rules. My daughter therefore paid for a single ticket to Zurich for her cousin and she flew.
However, now starts the craziness.
Clearly, the name needed to be changed for the return leg of the flight or the same problem would recur.
So, we called Swiss Service Centre and asked to change the name. First response was fine and they asked us to email a copy of her passport which we did.
However, this is when the kafka-esque sequence started.
We received an email stating that she was a 'no show' as she hadn't flown the first leg of the flight so they couldn't change the name and the second leg was no longer available. We responded, of course, that this was because Swiss had denied carriage and that we'd bought ANOTHER ticket on the same flight for her.
The call centre (in English, not German - wonder if the German would have been better) seemed completely unable to deal with the situation. After several hours on the phone at which we'd get frustratingly close to a solution we'd end up back in the classic Catch-22 situation.
Katie (her nickname) hadn't flown the first leg of the originally booked ticket. Therefore they said they needed to turn the return into a single leg flight. However, they could only do this with the originally booked name, not the correct full passport name. We said, OK, let's change the name first ... but then they said that, as she hadn't flown the first leg, no changes could be made now.
Finally, after more hours on the phone and my chatting with their support team on Twitter, we managed to get them to split the booking and create a new one ... but still in the nickname.
Now, the final twist; they said that the name change to the full name was 'in progress' but nothing came. We followed up with a further email including the passport again to change the 'new' booking. But, now, we are suddenly told that, despite us asking for the name change a week ago, it's now too late to make a change and they're claiming that because it's the second leg of the flight it, again, can't be changed. We point out that it's no longer the second leg as it's a new booking for a single leg. No response.
At this point, we give up and hope that the staff at Zurich airport might be more competent. Fortunately, yes, they are and were able to resolve the issue in 15 minutes and Katie, now correctly registered as Katherine, is able to fly home with her cousins.
However, the ineptitude of the phone service centre and whoever answers emails/tweets caused us hours of hassle and really impacted the holiday. We were kept on hold, we were told contradictory stories and, on three occasions, the phone just went dead. We were promised a call back as 'a supervisor needed to authorise the change' in fifteen minutes. Three hours later we'd received no call and when we called again they had 'lost' the booking and claimed that Katie had never been on it !
What came across was that none of the (English speaking) service centre staff knew what they were doing and they simply couldn't deal with the situation. And, more worryingly, instead of seeking senior support they made excuses, claims that were clearly untrue and just tried to get us to go away without thinking of the stress all of this was creating for a 19 year old student.
So, Swiss Airlines, please provide better training or more support to your Service Centre staff so that they can deal with what should be relatively trivial matters without taking hours and stressing customers unnecessarily.
Grrrrrrr ....
