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

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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Thank you daddyman and Leo for your posts. I was beginning to think I was going mad. At least you understand what I am saying. We are now about to complete this form for the 3rd time in order to respond to their latest email which was only a one liner and didn't adequately respond to my issue raised.

It seems that I could be subjected to a series of one liner, fob off emails, forcing me each time to complete yet another form....until I get fed up and go away.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
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?
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Laramie, having been through this myself and eventually given up I DO understand and am totally in agreement with you.
The issue is NOT the time taken to fill out the form, be it once, twice or thrice, it is that this does not resolve the complaint. The response email from Aer Lingus merely gives a reference number, not a solution, or even a summary of the issue. Nothing further came to me, in the following weeks, and I tried again, with the same (non) results.
I had phoned and spoken to a pleasant lady who said the refund of my fees, for a flight not taken, would be processed back on to my credit card. The fees were not refunded, so phoning obviously doesn't work either.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
Your reluctance to disclose the nature of your complaint does not help your argument.
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The OP is making a complaint about the complaints process. If he discloses his original complaint then the thread will go off in a completely different direction.
 
Tintagel said:
The OP is making a complaint about the complaints process. If he discloses his original complaint then the thread will go off in a completely different direction.
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In my view, the nature of the complaint is relevant. But in any event, I don't believe that the process is particularly onerous. You input some data which you have to hand, and if you want to correspond again, you do it again. I'm not an apologist for airlines, but I suspect that the process is designed in this manner because of the sheer number of tenuous complaints.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
In my view, the nature of the complaint is relevant. But in any event, I don't believe that the process is particularly onerous. You input some data which you have to hand, and if you want to correspond again, you do it again. I'm not an apologist for airlines, but I suspect that the process is designed in this manner because of the sheer number of tenuous complaints.
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I could not disagree more with this. Clearly the process is blocking legitimate complaints which the airline should not be doing. It is a faulty process.
Do you accept that?
Honestly there is so much evidence here indicating that it's has caused people not to pursue legitimate claims, or have those legitimate claims followed up on, that any reasonable person would accept that.
Every customer facing organisation has to deal with tenuous complaints. It does not give them any right to use this as justification for dodging legitimate ones, or lumping more stress onto those with legitimate complaints.
The only acceptable impact is that it impedes the progress of processing the complaints, but the complaint process itself should be transparent.
The complaints process we see here is that of an organisation with something to hide.

We don't know if the OP's complaint is legit or not, but that's beside the point.
What's not legit is how Aer Lingus are going about dealing with it. The complaint, for all someone knows, has gone into a black hole queue that will never be dealt with. That is not correspondence. That is not an acceptable complaints handling process.
 
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Fair enough, I just happen to disagree. If I had an issue with AL, I would be fine with the process as it is.

How does the process block legitimate claims?

If I have an issue, I fill out an automated form. What exactly do people want?
 
Leper said:
Ireland is top-heavy with My-Flight-Bought-Coffee-was-not-hot-enough-I-want-a-free-flight-to-Chicago people
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Gordon Gekko said:
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.
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Nobody knows what type of complaints are made to Aer Lingus so I don't know where Leper and Gordon Gekko are getting this information.
If you take a look at their Facebook page the complaints seem very genuine and those posting them have tried the normal complaints route and are not getting any response.
Aer Lingus should stop this deliberate obfuscation and forcing their customers to complete the same forms over and over.
 
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Gordon Gekko said:
Fair enough, I just happen to disagree. If I had an issue with AL, I would be fine with the process as it is.

How does the process block legitimate claims?

If I have an issue, I fill out an automated form. What exactly do people want?
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If you'd been overcharged a significant amount of money would you be happy with no feedback or response to your query for three months?
 
Leo said:
If you'd been overcharged a significant amount of money would you be happy with no feedback or response to your query for three months?
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Where was three months mentioned and how might one be overcharged?

Thanks.
 
I mentioned the three months as the period I had to wait for an initial response to them over-charging me in my earlier post. Took another couple of weeks to get the refund sorted as they wouldn't process without me providing copies of the receipt and tickets which luckily I still had.
 
Gordon Gekko said:
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?
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If a reference number is given after the initial complaint is made then all that should be required is for the person to quote that reference number in their response.
 
Grizzly said:
If a reference number is given after the initial complaint is made then all that should be required is for the person to quote that reference number in their response.
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If you do try to follow up, they automatically issue a new reference number. That said, trying to follow up is futile, you may as well just wait the weeks or months it takes them to get around to your original complaint.
 
Grizzly said:
If a reference number is given after the initial complaint is made then all that should be required is for the person to quote that reference number in their response.
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And that's the OP's problem, the only way to follow up is by raising a new query which generates a new reference number
 
I reported an incident to one of the cabin staff recently as I was exiting the plane. When I returned from holiday, I followed up with Aer Lingus on one of these forms and asked them had the cabin crew member logged my complaint as I wanted to pursue the matter. They told me that they would not confirm if the cabin crew did or did not record the complaint. It appears that they do not want to co-operate at all with anybody.
 
I had to complete one of these forms recently. Only after I had sent it did I realise that I did not have a copy of the correspondence that I had sent. At least if you can send or reply to a standard email you can have a copy of your timeline of correspondence at your fingertips.
 
Update. Well in the end I contacted Aer Lingus approximately 7 times through their online form. Having to complete all my details each and every time. Eventually I got the matter settled with a credit toward future flights to settle my complaint. Not exactly what I wanted.
 
Due to their dire customer service and the fact that they do not give points on their regional flights I have a policy of not using them unless there is no other option. I am a frequent flyer; I take between 40 and 100 flights a year. Aer Lingus are my least favourite airline. I know many other frequent flyers who are of the same opinion.
 
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