Some Correspondence

From: Me
Sent via the Star Alliance Website

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Customer message
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I see that you don't list an email address.

Given the standard of service that you have provided me with over the last week, I think that's wise.

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From: Star Alliance Helpdesk
To: me
subject RE: Complaints #SA05191020116063

Hello,

Thank you for writing to us at the Star Alliance Help Desk.

Please reply to this email with more information. We will direct you to the correct department or provide you the required information.

We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your patience.

Regards,

Star Alliance Help Desk

STAR ALLIANCE

THE WAY THE EARTH CONNECTS

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From: me

To Star Alliance Helpesk

Hello Star Alliance

Well, since you ask.

I fly fairly regularly. Over the last 12 months I’ve made 7 trips to Japan, 3 to Malaysia, 2 to Korea and one to China. I am a Qantas Frequent Flyer member, so I have always preferred to book OneWorld flights whenever possible. I am at Platinum status with Qantas, which gets me Emerald status with OneWorld.

My trips usually take in two or three cities, so I generally book circle Asia fares. I always book business class.

For my most recent trip, I had to travel Sydney-Seoul-Beijing-Osaka-Tokyo-Kuala Lumpur-Sydney. When I checked the flight schedules, I found that a Star Alliance fare could provide more direct flights and so, for the first time ever, I booked a Star Alliance fare.

I have been bitterly disappointed from the very beginning.

When I checked in at Sydney, I found I had access to the Air NZ business class lounge. This was probably a good thing because it conditioned me for what was to follow. The lounge was busy and noisy. Food, such as it was, was a little tricky to come by. On top of that, I had to queue for the toilets (this was at 8:30am!!) because someone had decided that it was a great time to clean the men’s toilet and so the only toilet that was available was the disabled toilet. The person doing the cleaning did not seem in any particularly great hurry and wandered in and out of them several times while they were closed to the lounge guests and the queue grew increasingly long.

Next was my actual flight, which was on Asiana. I can report that the “Entertainment” on this flight certainly was comical. Unfortunately the comedy came not from any of the shows, but rather from the fact that the AV unit appeared to have been rescued from the early 1990s. I could not get the thing to work and neither could the passenger seated next to me. I guess the “entertainment” comes from spending 2 hours trying to make the damn thing operate as it was supposedly intended to.

Even if I could have made it operate, it appears that it was not on-demand anyway and so I would not have been able to watch the movies regardless. Perhaps on Oneworld there is a higher standard expected of member airlines, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I flew a Oneworld international flight that didn’t have AVOD in business.

The next disappointment was on the trip from Beijing to Osaka. This was with ANA. I had booked a business class fare, but was advised at the time of booking that BC was full and that I would be waitlisted. That’s OK, I understand that sometimes flights are full.

When I arrived at check-in I was told that BC was still full. I said that I understood – these things happened – but I was then told that I could not access the lounge.

I had spent a total of 24 hours in China. Arrived at 1400 and flew out at 1400 the next day. Twelve of those 24 hours were spent in meetings. I was tired, I needed to check my emails and now I was being told that even though I had paid a business class fare, I would have to fly economy class AND I could not access the lounge. The phrase “insult to injury” came to mind. After a long and occasionally animated discussion with the desk staff, they eventually agreed that I could access the Air China lounge. On arrival at the lounge, I was held up once again when I actually tried to enter the lounge by a person who told me that they had to confirm my invitation. I noted that my invitation was clearly printed with my name on it and asked what he was going to confirm, but he either ignored or misunderstood the question. After another long wait at the entrance to the lounge, I was finally able to enter.

The lounge itself was bedlam. Trying to get served noodles appeared to be possible only if you were willing to queue and everything else was a lucky dip. I tried to enquire about wireless internet access and was first ignored and then told (in broken English) that I had to “get the password from near the machine” or that’s what it sounded like anyway. Confused, I wandered back toward the entrance to try to find the password. After a while I discovered that the “machine” was in fact a computer that dispensed a login and password. It required you to supply your passport.

I went back to retrieve my password and finally managed to get my login. Surely, when a passenger enters a lounge toting a laptop, it might be a good idea to tell them that there is a complex mechanism in place to ensure that the government can adequately spy on foreigners?

The flight to Osaka was on ANA, where I learned that ANA has discovered that by reducing the legroom available in economy class they can fit in an extra row or two. Mere discomfort on the part of their passengers should not be an impediment to this innovative revenue enhancing strategy and indeed ANA do not allow it to stand in their way.

I should note here that the food on the ANA flight was very good, despite being in economy. I’m not sure that serving a stew on a flight boasting the world’s most cramped economy class seats is a great idea, but the hotel was able to launder my shirt after I checked in and the stains are barely visible.

As I type these lines, I am aboard the ANA flight from Tokyo to Singapore. My experience in the lounge at Narita was similar to the experience I have had in all Star Alliance lounges to date. It was incredibly busy and badly under-serviced. Wireless internet was slow and unreliable and required an email address to login. When the announcement for my flight came, it was with a small sense of relief that I made my way to the boarding gate. I stopped along the way for a cigarette, dawdled the rest of the way to the gate and found that boarding had not even commenced. It did not commence for some time afterward, all the while the giant plasma screen happily announcing the flight as “on-time.” I’m sure it was still reading “on time” when we finally took off a half an hour after our scheduled departure.

I want to emphasise that while the service has indeed been appalling at times, what has frustrated me most has been the dreadful waste of my time. Time that I could have spent productively has been wasted because of Star Alliance. Whether it was wasted in the Air NZ lounge by staff that decided to clean when the lounge is busiest, or by ANA staff who feel that they need to argue about whether I should get access to a business lounge even though I have paid business class fares, or by Asiana deciding to save my by using an outdated AV system or by Air China Lounge staff detaining me for no particularly good reason. As a business traveller, time is the most valuable thing I have. It’s expensive while I am on the road, so I need to make sure that my time is used carefully and wisely. I prefer to be at home, so I pack every day on the road with business in order that the total duration of the trip is shorter. It means that when I am on the ground, I prefer to be taking care of the meetings that need to be taken care of. I plan on spending my flying time and my transit time on administrative tasks such as email. So I find it incredibly frustrating that my time is wasted by a service provider.

I am beginning to see a pattern here with Star Alliance. Except in the gravest of need, I doubt that I will be using your services again, so you’ll lose nothing by simply ignoring this note. Having said that, I will ask one small favour. If you want to write up an apology, or some sort of generic note that essentially says nothing, of if you want to draft a form letter expressing “grave concern” about an “important customer,” please DO NOT SEND IT TO ME. It would be a waste of both your time and mine. Please only write to me if you actually have something substantive to say. Only write to me if there is a specific action that you plan to take and you feel that I would be better off having been informed of that action.

Best of luck for your future.

Shane Curran

P.S. As I finish this email off, I am pleased to report that ANA’s enthusiastic ineptitude continues after boarding. The appetisers were near freezing and were not especially appetising anyway. It took me an hour just to get someone to take away the (largely untouched) tray. I can’t report on the mains as I have to work and was concerned that I would be stuck with tray for the duration of the flight. Attempts to request coffee and a sandwich were met with a blank look and the quizzically repeated phrase “sand each?” When I eventually decided to settle for just the coffee it was delivered without milk or sugar and by the time the attendant had returned with the milk and sugar, the coffee was cold.

So as I go back to my typing, I discover that I have had no power for all this time. The hostess is now going back to check on the problem and returns with the urgency and earnestness and the very sincere apology that has characterised the response to every cock-up that Star Alliance members have made to date. The power is back on and there is no particularly great problem, but once again and foolish and pointless waste of time that I could have used productively.

What Star Alliance represents to me is a litany of errors, none of them especially egregious when taken individually, but happening far too often and far too regularly to be considered exceptions. The things that customer service is made of, consistency, care, thoughtfulness, perception and so on, are not especially fun or exciting. I suspect that comical Rugby Advertisements were much more exciting for Air NZ and an exciting and witty new logo were much more exciting for Asiana.

I have long considered the OneWorld airlines to be more staid an conservative than their Star Alliance counterparts. JAL compares rather greyly to ANA, Qantas seems much more straight-laced than Air NZ. I still hold this view, the only difference being that now I actually consider it a positive attribute for OneWorld.

Regards

SCC

Catching Up

I wrote the articles below while I was gallivanting across Malaysia and Singapore, but once I returned to Australia I found myself so frightfully busy that I didn’t have a chance to post them. As I am now on a flight to Seoul, I will prepare them for posting so that it will just be a cut-n-paste jobbie once I check in.

Proof Reader Wanted (23 September 2011)

It has been pointed out to me, following my previous post, that I am badly in need of a proof reader. Perhaps posting blog entries while sitting by the pool revelling in the wonderment of Tiger beer, is not a good idea after all.

Nonetheless applications for the job of proof reader are now open. There is no monetary reward, but think of the personal satisfaction.

In Georgetown (24 September)

After our action-packed train-ride from Singapore to Butterworth (see earlier post) we checked into the Yang Keng Hotel in George Town, Penang at about 10:00pm on Tuesday night. It’s a lovely little hotel run by friendly and enthusiastic staff. The hotel itself is in a world heritage area of Georgetown and seems to be very popular. We only stayed there for two nights though as it was booked out after that.

It seems that this area of George Town is undergoing something of a rejuvenation. Our hotel was formerly a budget backpackers hostel that has been extensively renovated and restored. There are quite a few hotels in the area that have undergone similar transformations and quite a few cheap and nasties too. Prices are ridiculously cheap. My hotel is about MYR300 (a little under AUD 100) per night and includes breakfast and internet access. You can get a backpacker dorm for under MYR18 (about AUD6) per night.

Malaysia in general is a little like that. The country is not really poor, but it’s not yet a first world country either. It shows in lots of ways too. The trains I’ve already mentioned, but then there are the shopping centres with their department stores and name brands and mildew growing on the walls. There are the gutters that were once sewers and fall about three feet with little warning to the unwary. There are the street vendors selling freshly crushed mango juice mixed with carnation milk and crushed ice. The drink, while delicious almost beyond words in the Malaysia heat, is served in a plastic freezer bag and then sucked through a straw.

Often in countries like this, it I possible to nominate the service as a redeeming feature. That is not the case in Malaysia. The service is uniformly lethargic and uninformed. Sitting by the hotel pool yesterday I ordered two beers and an ice-bucket. There was no attendant at the poolside of course, so I made my way to the “Relaxation Centre” which consisted of a very serviceable gymnasium and a massage room. There were four or five staff in this area and no customers. I knew from previous experience that waving for them to come to the poolside only resulted in having a sore arm.

Attendant (brightly): “Yes Sir, how may I be of assistance?”

Me: “I’d like two bottles of Tiger beer and an ice-bucket delivered to the pool please.”

Attendant (curiously): “Yes Sir, you would like ice with your beer. I can assure you that it is well refrigerated.”

Me (flatly): “Not ice with the beer, an ice-bucket. A silver bucket filled with ice that I put one bottle of beer in while I drink the other. In this way I don’t have to come back and bother you when I need my second beer.”

Attendant (brightly again): “It is no bother at all sir!”

Me (flatly still): “Then it’s a bother to me. It takes too long and I’d rather just have the two bottles now and have an ice-bucket.”

Attendant (dubiously): “I will order two beers with ice?”

Me (flatly still, but with a slightly more directive tone): “Not with ice, in an ice-bucket.”

Attendant (brightly again): “Yes Sir!”

At this point my attendant picked up the phone, dialled a few numbers and thrust the receiver at me. I looked at him quizzically and prepared to ask him why he had spent so much time asking me if it was only to hand me a telephone, but I thought better of it.

Voice on Telephone (bored): “Yes?”

Me: “I want to get some beer delivered to the pool. I want two bottles of tiger beer and an ice bucket.”

VoT (slightly amused): “You want ice in you beer?”

Me: (calmly but emphatically): “No. I do not want ice in the beer. I want you to get an ice-bucket. It’s a large silver bucket. I want you to put two bottles of Tiger beer in the bucket. I want you to cover them with ice. I want you to deliver the ice bucket to the poolside where you will find me sitting with a book.”

VoT (bored again): “OK, It will be there in 25 to 30 minutes sir.”

Me (incredulous): “What?!?? Why will it take 25 to 30 minutes to bring my beer?”

VoT (still bored): “Very well sir, we will try very hard to have it there in five minutes.”

I was not especially surprised when my beer arrived 30 minutes later. There were two frosty cold bottles of Tiger beer and a small bowl of partly melted ice cubes.

Don’t think for a minute that this was a dodgy hotel. It was part of the Shangri-La group, admittedly a lower rung in the Shangri-la group than what I would have stayed in for work, for example, but nothing too shabby. The rooms were spacious and generally well appointed if a little dated, but it seems that the standard of service one might expect in Australia just doesn’t exist here. And frankly, the standard of service in Australia is not that great.

Malaysia’s growing pains appear in many ways. She is a little like a woman wearing Dunlop Volley shoes, cheap polyester pants and a slightly worn I heart Malaysia t-shirt while carrying an Hermes Kelly bag. You see rough shanties with roofs made from scraps of corrugated iron boasting shiny new satellite dishes. Young men and women wearing corporate uniforms – gray suits with the company colours for their ties or scarves – weaving their motor scooters through traffic that to me seems impenetrably dense.

On that point I wish to make a small observation that probably reveals more about my own prejudices than anything else. I find it very disconcerting to see a woman in a hijab riding a motor cycle. There I’ve said it.

At a resort near Batu Ferrenghi we saw quite a large number of young muslim couples. Most of the women wearing full head-to-toe burqas, taking banana boat rides. Afterward they would adjourn to the deck chairs in the resort, recline back with their non-alcoholic cocktails and take pictures of each other. Again, I found it odd, not just the apparent incongruity of a burqa sitting astraddle what appears to be a large inflatable phallus being towed around by a motor boat, but also the pictures. Our young romeo would have nothing more than a picture of someone wearing a burqa wouldn’t he?

Singapore rest room (25 September)

A short note to relate an entirely extraordinary event.

I am in Singapore right now. Awaiting my departure from Singapore airport, sitting comfortably in the Qantas lounge.

Our day started this morning when we arrived at Singapore on the Ekspres at about 7am. We went to find some breakfast and then at about 9am, the chikenz decided that there was more shopping to be done. It’s Singapore after all.

At the first of our shopping centres, which was a rather up-market one, I visited the men’s room in order to take advantage of the rather more sophisticated plumbing that one may enjoy in Singapore.

I entered the cubicle, closed the door and found that it was pitch black. Not dark. Completely black. The door fitted flush at the ceiling and floor and there was no light at all. I checked the next cubicle and found the same problem. Slightly perturbed, I went toward the wash basins, where a young man with a white jacket, similar to a dentists jacket, was wiping benches and basins and generally looking as though he worked there.

One of the lovely things about Singapore is that virtually everyone speaks English and they all speak it very well. So I was not concerned in the slightest as I strode toward my man and said “There seems to be a problem in the cubicles. There’s no light on as far as I can tell.”

In a scene reminiscent of Manuel in Fawlty Towers, my washroom attendant looked at me, tilted his head to one side and said “eh?”

“There’s no light. In the cubicle.” I said.

“Eh?” he said.

“The toilet. There’s no light in the toilet. The cubicle. No light.” I pointed to the light above us. “No light.” I said.

He too pointed to the light and said “Eh?”

I walked toward the cubicles, pointing that way and saying “The light doesn’t work. Is it broken or does it just need to be turned on?”

My washroom attendant looked at me quizzically as I strode back toward the cubicle gesturing to the ceiling periodically. It would be unfair to say that he looked at me as though I were stupid. He looked at me as though I were rather dangerous and quite possibly stupid.

“Look,” I said standing by the cubicle, “it’s dark, no light.” I gestured for him to come over and see for himself that there was no light.

He shuffled toward me. Clearly reluctant. When he was still a few metres away, he said “ah!” which is a lot like “eh?” but has a tone of enlightenment rather than a tone of puzzlement.

“Sotto!” he said.

“Eh?” I said.

He repeated. “Sotto!”

“Is it auto?” I asked.

“Yes, yes!” he said. “Close door otto!”

“It comes on automatically?” I asked. “Really? It didn’t seem to come on automatically before?”

“Sotto, sotto.” He said and gestured me to go into the cubicle. Then suddenly it dawned on me. I had to turn the lock in order to get the light to come on! So I turned the lock and the light DID NOT COME ON.

I came back out and said “no, it’s still not working.” But my washroom attendant had disappeared. Clearly a clever, resourceful chap, he had seen the danger that I represented, lured me into the cubicle and done a runner. I was in that damned cubicle for less than 20 seconds. The time it takes to close the door, pause while you realise you should lock it, lock it and the open it again. 20 Seconds at the absolute outside and my man had seen the gap and run through it.

Bravo!