05.23.09
Travel Prep
I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with American Airlines over the past few days. I have been making plans for an upcoming business trip, as well as attempting to use my AAdvantage Miles for some summer travel to visit family.
Any of you who have had to deal with this mess of a company will, like me, avoid using their web site at all costs. It has to be one of the worst user experiences on the Web. I’m not the only one who thinks so, and I think Dustin comes to the right conclusion:
At the AA annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Mr. Arpey said the company is “taking efforts to improve customer service”. I think this is a shortsighted goal. AA should take efforts to improve the whole customer experience. AA suffers from deficits in every aspect of its business. The website is a horrid abomination, the customer service is generally — infamously — bad, and the casual travel market is practically ignored. The customer experience, from start to finish, for every interaction a customer has with the company is not perfected. That’s where the problem is.
“not perfected” is quite the understatement, in my opinion. My latest call to American Airlines’ AAdvantage Platinum support line is yet another example of this. As a frequent traveler calling what should be their top-tier support personnel, I was greeted by a surly, curt, unpleasant representative and hung up the phone incredibly frustrated.
Oh yeah… and those frequent flyer miles? There are so many restrictions and extra fees that I ended up finding another way to book my travel. So it looks I’m sitting on a mountain of worthless miles from a company that doesn’t care: not even about their most loyal, spendy customers.
It is WAY past time to take my business elsewhere!
