“Worst Customer Service Either”
by Vivee on March 17, 2013
Flight from Columbus to San Antonio
- Airline:
-
American
- RT/OW
- Round Trip
- Number of Stops:
-
- Date of Flight:
- March 2013
- Seat Class:
- economy
Encountered the surliest flight attendant in my 30+ years of flying. I simply asked "Do you have cream" when she set black coffee in front of me. I was not intimidating or angry (I have never been able to be intimidating even when I wanted to be), and her snarly response was "YEAH BUT YOU GOTTA ASK FOR IT! I CAN'T READ YOUR MIND" (Wasn't that what I just did?). And BTW -- they did not have cream, only powdered creamer or milk. She yelled loud enough to be heard for at least a few rows in front and back of me -- I felt like a small child who had just been spanked in front of the whole class -- instead of an almost 60-year-old college professor who would never and has never spoken to my students with such disrespect. If flight attendants are underpaid and oveerworked -- and I don't doubt that they are -- they should take it out on their employer, not paying customers who are making very routine and reasonable requests. If this incident is representative of the flight attendant's people skills, she should look for another line of work.
Check-in both coming and going was extraordinarily long -- is this the result of the sequester. Trip back home from San Antonio to Dallas was delayed by 4-hours due to weather. I'm not complaining about the delay -- better safe than sorry -- but the pilot and flight attendants seemed flustered and disorganized. Was this the first time they had ever dealt with weather-related flight delays? And when we arrived in Dallas after midnight and missing our connecting flights there was only one tired and irritable ticket agent who had been called in at the last minute to deal with assisting people with re-booking. Also there were several of us who for one reason or another, ended up on the other side of the security gates, and no security personnel to help us get back to the secure side where the ticket agents (and plugs for our worn-down cell phone batteries) were located.
If you know you have a flight coming in late, you should have airline/airport personnel who hang around long enough to take care of the needs of those passengers. I hope that the merger between American Airlines and US Airways will result in improved attitudes of the continuing staff.