Trying to make a complaint to Aer Lingus....they are having a laugh.

L

Laramie

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I had a complaint about a recent flight experience with Aer Lingus. You are asked to complete an online form with your personal details, your flight details and the nature of your complaint.

If you are lucky you might get a response within 2 to 3 weeks.

You get a "do not reply" email sent to you. You are allocated a reference number. If you want to respond you are then directed to a link. When you click on this link you are directed to yet another online form, identical to the one you originally completed. You cannot just pass a comment. You have to complete all your personal detail, flight details, yet again. Even though you have already given these and even though you have been allocated a reference number.

When you do this you are allocated, yet another reference number.

Each time you need to respond to the Aer Lingus email you have to complete this identical online form again and again and again.

This has been designed to frustrate people and Aer Lingus should stop this disgraceful contempt for their customers.
 
Sounds less frustrating than the Lufthansa site, which demands details almost down to you shoe size and then refuses to submit the completed form without telling you why. Mind you, that's the English-language version; I'm sure the German one works fine.
 
Laramie, been there, done that, eventually gave up. Aer Lingus won.
All they have to do to win is: nothing.
In order to maybe succeed you have to keep pushing.
 
I think the difficulty in making a complaint is perhaps deliberate. Only the determined will succeed, or not, as the case may be!
 
I've been there and done that too... and I won because I took them to the small claims court. That got their attention really fast.
 
You only have to log on to their Facebook page to see the list of daily complaints made by travellers. Yes, problems will happen, but a company should have a proper system of dealing with complaints and in a timely manner, supported by caring staff. Putting customers through the above ordeal is for one reason only........make them go away.
 
I have always found Aer Lingus to be a good company. No company can boast that their Customer Service is 100% perfect. Having worked in Customer Service (although 20 years ago) I can say there are two sides to every story. I could write a series of books regarding Customer Complaints both in favour of the customer and the company (or against if you wish).

We don't know the nature of the complaint here, other than difficulty with the on-line complaint forms. If Laramie wishes to share what actually happened, perhaps we can adjudicate here even without the evidence of Aer Lingus. Failing that we just have his word that something might have gone wrong, nothing else.
 
Leper said:
We don't know the nature of the complaint here, other than difficulty with the on-line complaint forms. If Laramie wishes to share what actually happened, perhaps we can adjudicate here even without the evidence of Aer Lingus. Failing that we just have his word that something might have gone wrong, nothing else.
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For the moment my complaint is about the way Aer Lingus handles complaints. The delays, not answering specific questions, not being able to respond via email when they contact me. Making me fill in an online form every time I need to respond. It doesn't matter what the complaint is, everyone is made go through this process.
 
Let's keep the ball on the ground here. The main issue is your complaint and sub-issue on the way you are or are not being kept informed or answered.

If we know what the main issue is perhaps we can inform or even offer advice. People in Customer Service receive complaints (that's their job). Then they seperate the whinging from genuine complaints. Then they should reply.

Ireland is top-heavy with My-Flight-Bought-Coffee-was-not-hot-enough-I-want-a-free-flight-to-Chicago people. With respect, you have supplied no information regarding what your complaint is about and until you do so you might be wasting our time. I cannot see any reason why you cannot supply the details.
 
Laramie said:
For the moment my complaint is about the way Aer Lingus handles complaints. The delays, not answering specific questions, not being able to respond via email when they contact me. Making me fill in an online form every time I need to respond. It doesn't matter what the complaint is, everyone is made go through this process.
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It does matter. If, for example, your complaint and the bulk of complaints are utterly frivolous, there's logic in having a process which keeps the complainant at arm's length. And in any event, what you describe (i.e. filling in some information) doesn't sound particularly onerous.
 
Leper said:
If we know what the main issue is perhaps we can inform or even offer advice
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The main issue is how Aer Lingus deal with complaints, it is not a sub issue as you seem to insist. I don't know why you cannot accept that this is my complaint. Not anything else.
Why should a person who has been allocated a reference number have to again submit all their details, each and every time they want to respond to an email from Aer Lingus.

https://www.aerlingus.com/support/customer-relations/

This is the form that has to be completed each and every time.
 
I looked at the Aer Lingus complaint form. It looks perfectly reasonable and in order to me and simple to complete. With respect, I cannot see what you are complaining about other than complaining. Still we do not know when you made your complaint or even what the complaint was about. Then we do not know how long you waited before you sent in your "reminders." We have no evidence that Aer Lingus fell down on the job other than your word.

We don't have all of the story, even from you and we have nothing from Aer Lingus. Aer Lingus are not going to respond on this forum. Sorry Laramie, with the paucity of information supplied by you, I have to come down in favour of Aer Lingus.
 
The OP's issue to me does not seem to be the original form, it is the fact that once the form is submitted you have no effective way of following up on your query aside from resubmitting your query from scratch a 2nd, 3rd and 4th time. That to me, as someone who deals with customer complaints on a daily basis is ineffective, inefficient and frustrating. Companies should not be hiding from complaints, they should embrace them as valid feedback from their customers.
 
A few years ago, I filed a serious customer service complaint with Aer Lingus after they illegally denied my children boarding on a holiday flight. They stonewalled us for months until I thought of contacting the Aviation Regulator's office http://www.aviationreg.ie/ who took up our case and forced Aer Lingus to pay us compensation of €1,000 plus a refund of our (expensive) ticket costs.

My only conclusion from the affair is that Aer Lingus' customer service is pretty much non-existent.
 
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I had what I thought was a serious issue with Aer Lingus.

I had bought flights and prebooked seats months in advance for a family of 2 adults and 4 children travelling transatlantic. One of the children had special needs. Before the flight they reallocated the entire parties seats so that no one was sitting beside anyone else. I spend days phoning, emailing, facebooking and tweeting to try to resolve the issue with no success. They said to rely on others swapping seats after boarding which was not very helpful.

I took a guess at the email address of the CEO and everything was sorted within an hour.
 
thedaddyman said:
The OP's issue to me does not seem to be the original form, it is the fact that once the form is submitted you have no effective way of following up on your query aside from resubmitting your query from scratch a 2nd, 3rd and 4th time. That to me, as someone who deals with customer complaints on a daily basis is ineffective, inefficient and frustrating. Companies should not be hiding from complaints, they should embrace them as valid feedback from their customers.
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Yeah, that's it exactly. I had reason to use it a couple of years back over an over-charging issue. You submit the form and get a automatic response saying you're in a queue and they'll respond 'as soon as possible'. They direct you back to the very same form if you wish to contact them again relating to the same issue, but that only creates a new support case.

There is no one you can phone to escalate an issue, phoning the main numbers will only have you told to submit another case via the same form.

In my case it was 12 weeks before they responded to my original query.
 
Leper said:
I looked at the Aer Lingus complaint form. It looks perfectly reasonable and in order to me and simple to complete. With respect, I cannot see what you are complaining about other than complaining. Still we do not know when you made your complaint or even what the complaint was about.
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Leper, you still don't get it do you? My original complaint to Aer Lingus is not the issue and it is none of your business. I am not looking for advice on my original complaint. You seem incapable of understanding this.

My complaint is about how they deal with customer complaints. You say you have looked at the complaint form and it is perfectly reasonable. Yes it is. Except, when you get a response. The response to you comes by way of email. Great, except you cannot reply to this email. Why not?

You then have to go back to a brand new complaint form and start from scratch all over again. You input your name and address, telephone numbers. details of other people travelling with you. The dates and times of your flights. You quote a reference number. All this just to reply to the email that they just sent you.

If you get another response from them, they allocate you yet another reference number.

If you need to respond to them again. You have to open up yet another new complaint response form and again input your name and address, telephone numbers, details of other people travelling with you, times and dates of travel etc ....On and on it goes.

Do you now understand what my complaint is about?
 
I don't believe that your complaint about the process is reasonable. Having to fill in the form each time doesn't seem particularly onerous to me. How long does it take, 60 seconds? I'm also sceptical about your reluctance to disclose the nature of your underlying complaint. My suspicion is that Aer Lingus are inundated with complaints from crackpots about non-issues like the tea not being hot enough or there being insufficient storage above their seat. As a result, the process has been designed like this. Your reluctance to disclose the nature of your complaint does not help your argument.
 
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