Why do tour operators and airlines have one rule for travel agents and one rule forcustomers?
Last week Ihad a problem with a Thomson Cities package. With less than 24hrs to go, our mutual customers realised that one of the names on the booking was spelt incorrectly. A phone call to Thomson’s Cities department prompted a ticketing consultant to “see what she could do as it was at a late stage and the customers had been in receipt of their tickets for over a week”. She contacted the airline to be advised that nothing could be changed and the way around the problem would be to buy a new ticket.
I relayed this information to the customer, who then gave me 10mins of abuse. So I gave the customer the airline’s direct telephone number.
Lo and behold, they had no problem amending the name and the customer didn’t incur any extra charges.
Obviously I was pleased the problem had been rectified but why does it take an angry customer ringing direct to get any satisfaction?
This makes the agent, and the tour operator, look incompetent and also subjects the agent to unpleasant and annoyed customers.
Why can’t we work together? After all isn’t everyone’s goal to give five-star customer service?
Sara McDermott, sales manager, Lunn Poly, Hexham, Northumberland