Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines

February 1, 2005 Southwest Airlines Customer Relations P.O. Box 36647-1CR Dallas, Texas 75235-1647 RE: Complaint over Baltimore Staff – Particularly Rick # 53912 To Whom It May Concern: I am a frequent business traveler of Southwest since electing to cease flying America West in 2002 in favor or Southwest Airlines. I have flown approximately 40 roundtrips over the past few years. Recently I set up a business account for our company with Southwest and I would venture to say we have flown approximately 400 round trips in 2004. On January 14, 2004 I booked a rapid rewards itinerary (conf. #RNXLSV) for a roundtrip from LAX to Baltimore (1/28/05-1/31/05). Unfortunately, I was informed to beware of horrible customer service at Baltimore’s BWI airport prior to my trip by fellow employees at PACE. Surprised to hear this I decided I would “see for myself” and maintain a positive attitude. My worst fears came true yesterday when leaving BWI. I was scheduled for a 9:25 nonstop flight, but decided to attempt to fly standby on the 6:45 am flight through Phoenix. I was told by the ticketing agent to proceed to the gate with my original boarding pass where they would take care of the new boarding pass (the flight was not nearly full). Upon reaching the gate approximately 10 minutes prior to the scheduled departure after security issues, a younger gentlemen by the name of Rick (employee #53912) condescendingly said “what do you want me to do with this?” referring to my original boarding pass I had given him. After explaining that I was told to report to him for a standby ticket, Rick said it would not be an issue getting me on the flight. After typing for a prolonged period of time, Rick said it didn’t make sense that I wanted to fly to LAX when the boarding flight was traveling to Phoenix. I assured him there was a connection in Phoenix per the ticketing agent’s information. Rick was frustrated that I didn’t know the Phoenix to LAX connection flight number. I explained that I could simply look it up in one of my Southwest Flight Schedules so that I could be on my way, at which point he replied that he would look it up. After approximately 120 seconds of typing, Rick looked up at me and said “can’t do it” and handed me my original ticket. End of story. Despite 5 minutes prior to takeoff and the gate door still open, Rick had given up on his customer due to his incompetence in finding the connecting flight. Rick also became very nasty at this point when I pressed him to continue processing the ticket. My original 9:25 flight was then delayed by 50 minutes. At this point myself and another gentlemen on my proposed fight went across the terminal to the gate agent for an 8:45 am flight to LAX through San Antonio. We asked the woman what time the flight arrived and the status of the flights. She proceeded with asking for our boarding passes and immediately canceled our existing flight and printed us new boarding passes on her flight without saying one word. I insisted that we wanted to know information only at that point, and that we decided to stay on the existing flight. She exclaimed, “would you make up your mind!?” and shook her head while printing our original passes again. We arrived into LAX on time on our original flights after making up time airborne with less than anticipated westerly forces. I learned my lesson that Southwest employees in Baltimore appear to fit the mold: very rude and not Southwest-prototypical. I thought you would be interested to know this information. FYI, my fellow employees at PACE dealt with an experience related to using rapid rewards tickets and being treated like they were “discounted or free” tickets and therefore presented with downgraded service. I can assure you these tickets were more than paid for by our frequent travels. Should you have any questions or require additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me. Sincerely, Andrew Click this link to e-mail the message author: Email User