Pangea-Collection.com Blog – Artisan Jewellery

I am writing this post in a moment of complete anger over the lack of service at Air France Flying Blue. Here is the rant, please pass it along. We have to stand up to poor service and let these companies know you cannot treat customers badly.

I was a highest level frequent flyer of Flying Blue while I was living in Paris – Platinum member. When I returned home to Canada I was no longer able to use Air France Flying Blue as their flights are basically non-existent out of Toronto unless you are going to Europe.

Last Christmas I used a majority of my miles to go to Europe and was left with about 28 000 miles. My husband had also accumulated a lot of miles on Flying Blue visiting me in Paris. He had in his account about 145 000.

In January we were informed by mail that both my husband’s and my miles would expire in April 2009. This was a new policy and not the original date that the miles would have expired.

So first off they were forcing us to decide on a vacation plan in 3 months time or loose a combined 170 000 points! Already this is not a service oriented policy, we earned those miles and now they are forcing us to use them in a short period of time or lose them?!?

Fine we decided we would use them to go to Paris (who wouldn’t want to do that). I admit that when I travel overseas I like to travel business class, this is the reason I save up all the points. I would rather take fewer flights in business class than more flights in economy.

I called Air France to see what was the deal with expiring the miles and to see what my options were.

I was told by their representative that I could combine our miles for a return trip. I calculated that we would be about 8 000 points short of two return business class trips.

I investigated and discovered that my husband could convert Marriott miles into Flying Blue miles. He did. We waited the couple of weeks for the points to be allocated to his Flying Blue account. I contacted Flying Blue and was told that this is not possible.

So first they expire the miles before they are scheduled to expire, then they tell me I can combine the miles, I convert hotel miles to add to the flight miles and now I can’t use them.

Even if we ignore the stupidity of the rule in the first place, an administrative rule that prevents the two of us traveling together to use our combined point to travel – we still have the issue of the person telling me I could do so and now I cannot.

Here’s Flying Blue’s solution, fly one way business class and the other way economy. I could have done this already three weeks ago when I called them to inquire and I’m sure the flight avails would have been better! Now I have wasted Marriott points converting them to Flying Blue miles which I cannot use and will expire in April!

To top it all off I had to fight with the representative on the phone to even talk to a supervisor – get this they are “not allowed to transfer a customer to a supervisor for issues related to rules”. What??? As a customer why can’t I speak to whomever I want? Crazy! Eventually I did get to speak with a supervisor who was unwilling to help anyway.

He insists that I need to provide him with a name of the person I spoke with and then he would be able to “make an exception” which means he actually could help me if he wanted to.

I told him that I did not have the name of the person with whom I spoke but I could figure out the day and approximate time (I remember calling them between a specific meeting). This was not good enough for him, he needed a name. Can you believe this, now as a customer I need to basically record my conversations with Flying Blue so that I am sure that all the information is correct and if not I have “proof” of that!

So in the end I was left with the only option of “faxing” a complaint to them, but the supervisor “warned me” that they would not fix the issue anyway.

The net, net, I can’t use my points for business class and I have wasted hotel points and I will have left over points that will expire. Way to “reward” a customer!

Air France – Flying Blue – you need a lesson in how to deal with customers!

Tags: Air france, bad service, flying blue, reward points

This entry was posted on February 18, 2009 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.