EASYJET - THE SAGA CONTINUES

As you would expect, I received this totally patronising and insulting rubbish from Easyjet. From my own experience you can only make a first impression once, and my first impression of the "Customer Care" department is, unfortunately, exactly what I expected. Ignoring my relevant point that the gate was closed while 19 people with children stood there. The reason I put so much informatiuon in my original contact was to pre-empt any misunderstanding but unfortunately you are dealing with people who think that Easyjet is KING.

Unfortunately this type of thing goes on far too often and most people give up This is what they rely on. I just want to get them to the point where they admit fault and then I'll go for the compensation. But I have to get them to that point first.

As I say my next step is the MD and the Trading Standards Department, another bunch of useless idiots! Ah well! It gives me something to do, as if I don't have enough anyway!!!

EASYJET’S REPLY
Our Reference: 110726-001018
Booking Reference: EHPNQXZ

26th July 2011

Dear Mrs Cordner,

Thank you for contacting us regarding your flight. I am very sorry to hear of the inconvenience caused to you and your family on the day of the 19 July 2011.

Airport security has the right to uphold any passengers coming through to do their security checks and this is something which we cant change or prevent. In this case we advise all our passengers when they make a booking with us to arrive at the airport as soon as check in opens to allow time to get through to security and to the boarding gate.

Our check-in policy is included in our Carrier's Regulations which we ask you to read before confirming your booking. We also ask you to confirm that you have understood and accepted our Carrier's Regulations by ticking a box. Without doing this, you would not be able to complete your booking.

For your information I have included a link to our ‘check-in' section online:-

http://www.easyjet.com/EN/Flying/index.html

One of the ways we can guarantee a good level of on time performance is to ensure all our customers are at the gate on time. We will always try to help our customers when we can and exceptions can sometimes be made only if there is enough time for the necessary security checks to be completed and the departure time will not be affected.

As you mentioned in your e-mail you took the option of a transfer with us, this is at the airports discretion and cannot be offered all the time. As you took this option I cannot refund the cost of the transfer fee or the other costs you mentioned as easyjet is a point to point carrier and therefore does not deal with transport or supplements after a flight has been taken with us.

Therefore, I am unable to offer you a refund and I hope that this issue will not stop you from choosing to fly with easyJet in the future.

I do hope I have been able to answer your question fully.

Yours sincerely,

- Jennifer Hagan -
Customer Service Representative

MY REPLY ON 26TH JULY 2011

I did not ask for reimbursement, I merely listed my out of pocket expenses. The full history of that event was to aid your investigation. You will see from my email if your read it properly is that we DID comply with your terms and conditions i.e. we were through check in before your own cut off period of 40 minutes and at the gate before your cut off period of 25 minutes.

I will now escalate your reply to your MD unless my queries are answered. Please comply with my email request to listen to and time the conversation between your employees at the gate and ascertain for yourself why they closed that gate when 19 people with young children stood there.

This is an email I sent to EasyJet this morning. I have no expectation of anything being resolved, but you have to try don't you? If I don't get an answer I will escallate the problem to the MD and repeatedly keep sending numbered emails (i.e. this is the second time I have sent this email etc. etc.) until I get a satisfactory reply. I used this tactic once before and it worked.

DENIED BOARDING ON 0715 FLIGHT 2051 FROM LUTON AIRPORT ON 19/07/2011
BOOKING REF NO EHPNQXZ

We were denied boarding on this flight despite the fact that we cleared check in at 0610 and presented at the gate before 0650. Your closure times are 0635 at check in and 0650 at gate so please explain why this happened.

The mornings’ events unfolded as follows. As you will see there were problems at the airport that morning, but we still managed to arrive at the gate on time.

0400 Were collected by mini-van from our home in Surfleet, Lincolnshire.
0540 Arrived at airport complex. Congestion on airport approach road delayed arrival at terminal building.
0555 Stood in check line
0605 Checked in 30 minutes before cut off time of 0635
0610 At security we were advised that it would take approximately 15/20 minutes to clear due to high passenger levels.
0630 As we approached the security belts we were transferred to a longer queue “past line 6” because we had a pushchair.
0635 Selected for a random liquid test.
0650 Went directly to the gate where the desk clerk was speaking to someone on the telephone. She gestured with her hand and shook her head that we should wait.
Another 12 passengers joined us. Interestingly enough each family had a pushchair and had also been diverted to “past line 6”, the security point for pushchairs.
0655 The lengthy conversation came to a end when it was announced that the gate had been closed and we were denied boarding due to our late arrival. We vehemently denied this and asked to see someone in authority. Eventually Amanda Nunan (this may not be the correct spelling but she should be easily identified because she was the “dispatcher”, if this is the correct term) came to the desk.
We all pleaded with her to allow us to board. She refused despite the fact that we had one infant (aged 18 months) and three young children (one aged 2) with us. The other families also had two babies and children, many of who were crying.
0710 Amanda Nunan took us Gate 9 to “await further instructions”. We waited for approximately 30.
0750 From there we were taken to the EasyJet Sales Desk and advised that we should stand in line to book another flight. While standing in line we got into conversation with another lady who had had a similar experience. She told us that in her case 9 had been denied boarding on the Dortmond flight that morning. Once again Amanda Nunan was the “dispatcher”. (If this is the term).
0850 As all flights to Geneva were full we booked we booked on to the 1435 flight to Zurich instead. We met the lady denied access on the Dortmond flight again later that morning and she told us that she had been talking to 3 lads who had also been denied boarding on another flight, once again Amanda Nunan had been involved.
1816 We eventually arrived at Zurich Station where we changed rail tickets from Geneva/Aigle to Zurich/Aigle at an additional cost of CHF 184
2150 Arrived Aigle. Caught taxi because the last bus to Villars had left.
2210 Arrived Villars with four exhausted children who had left home at 0400 that morning. We were originally scheduled to arrive at 1355.

Out of pocket expenses due to being denied access to that flight:
Extra airfare £300.00
Lunch at Est Ristorante Luton £ 45.20
Extra cost of transferring train tickets £139.90 (CHF 184)
Taxi £ 76.03 (CHF 100)

My question is, what did we do wrong? We followed procedures every step of the way. We were not late at check in and we were not late at the gate. What else could we have done?

I am a MD of a service company and we record all calls, both external and internal and presume that a company like yours does the same. In the interest of good customer relations it is in both our interests to know the exact timing of that conversation, what exactly was discussed, why that inhumane decision was made and by whom.

In conclusion I would like to say that although there were problems at the airport that particular morning we arrived at the gate within your specified time period. Although, I have to say that it is my suspicion that by the time the telephone conversation was concluded and the gate closed it was probably after that cut off time. The conversation seemed to be about who was being denied boarding. They even talked about the number of “infants”. And this was while we were all standing there with young babies and children! I still can’t understand why, on compassionate grounds alone, we were not allowed to board that plane.

OFF I GO AGAIN

I would like to thank everyone that donated to the Marie Curie Charity through my Just Giving page. Every small gift will enable them to continue the good work of nursing people like Davy in their own homes. They work with kindness and understanding. They even offered to stay with me through the night in Davy’s last days so that I could get some rest. I can’t thank them enough and only hope that your donations will keep this wonderful service going for the benefit of the terminally ill. I will keep the Just Giving link open for a couple of months so please give generously to this good cause.

Now back to today. I was at home for less than a week when I set off again. This time I went to Switzerland with some of my family.

I sometimes wonder if I attract problems because the journey was a nightmare. My grandson, granddaughter and her four children set off for Luton airport at 4 am heading for the 7.15 am plane to Geneva. We arrived at check in at 5.50 am, 45 minutes before their stated closure time of 6.35 am. So far so good! However security was not good. We were told that it was typically taking 15/20 minutes to clear, but that was OK. As it came close to our turn we were transferred to another, slower, line because we had a baby buggy. Still OK! Then Ali was pulled aside to have a random liquid test. Still OK for time.

In the departure lounge the board was announcing a last call for our flight. By this time it was 06.45 am and getting close to our 07.15 departure so we ran only to be stopped at the gate by a hand gesture from the young lady at the desk. She was talking to someone on the telephone. There seemed to be some sort of problem. By this time it was 06.55 am, still OK. She finally came off of the ‘phone and announced that the gate had been closed. We were too late! It was a nasty moment.
I went into “stern” mode and then “indignant” mode and then “you’ve got to be kidding” mode”. The children started crying when they realised what was happening. In the meantime more people arrived at the gate. There were 19 of us denied travel that morning, all with young children. The dispatcher then joined in. She was a first class cow with no remorse or conscience at all. I then went into my “ranting” mode, which didn’t help. We were immediately herded into a remote area so that the waiting public wouldn’t get spooked and told to wait a decision. We knew what this would be but by that time it was obvious we were in the hands of experts who held all the cards.

The outcome was that we were herded back to reservations to book other flights. We then met people from other flights who had had the same thing happen and, amazingly enough, by the same dispatcher! Helplessly we exchanged email addressed, vowed to keep in touch and claim some sort of compensation. I think that it’s probably a waste of time myself, but I'm determined to at least go through the motions and give them grief.

All flights to Geneva where now full so we took another flight to Zurich at 2.35 pm. This meant hanging about the airport with sleepy children. But, we finally made it. When we stepped off the plane in Zurich it was like passing through the mirror into a different world! Clean, ordered, polite, and helpful. We soon have our tickets changed, directions onto the train and a printed itinerary of where to change trains, what platform we arrived at and what platform to head for at what time. The ticket checker on the pristine train even directed us to a lift so that we wouldn’t have to navigate the stairs with all the children. Amazing! At our final destination a pre arranged taxi was waiting to whisk us up to our beautiful chalet. We finally arrived at 10.00 pm!!

The rest of our party travelled by car, arriving a couple of hours ahead of us. EasyJet should be renamed HardJet or even AttitudeJet. And guess what? They blamed the airport! The truth is that they are both to blame. And do you think that I can rightly anticipate some high level buck passing going on in the days to come? You bet!

MISSION COMPLETE

I did it! I went around the world without flying, travelling from London via New York from East to West. On 27th March I met up with 22 "Oz-Bus" fellow travellers at the start of an amazing journey through Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, Siberia, Mongolia, China, across the Pacific to Alaska, then through Canada to USA and New York where I said farewell to my friends to undertake the last leg of my journey alone on a Cruise Liner across the North Atlantic, arriving home on 13th July.

If you are interested to read about it just click on the logo on the side bar at “R&C epic adventure - READ BLOG NOW" button. What this travel log will not and cannot say is the “warts and all” inside story of the trip which, I know, everyone is waiting for me to tell. Well that’s for me to know and you to find out! What takes place on the Oz-Bus stays on the Oz-Bus. Suffice to say we did have our moments of “high drama”!

However, I will say that the whole experience was challenging, exhilarating and sometimes exhausting but one that I’ll be forever grateful that I experienced. I was sometimes elated, angry, tired but never, never bored. What is more important is that I met some fantastic people, some of whom I would like to consider as my friends.

I am always being asked what the “highlights” of the trip were. Strangely enough not the obvious things like Red Square, Siberian Express, Great Wall of China, Terracotta Warriors, Beijing Olympic Stadium, Niagara Falls, Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Woodstock, Sleepy Hollow etc, etc . All stunning but, strangely enough, many of the highlights were quite ordinary things like:

Jono holding my hand to stop me falling when we walked back across very, very thin, and very, very slippery ice from Olkhon Island on Lake Biakal;

laughing with Jonny, Sirin, Jono while playing bingo on the Diamond Princess;

the strangely comfortable feeling that I felt re-joining my Green Tortoise companions after a day out in Seattle with Jack & Betsy;

the surreal feeling of going to a blues club in Chicago, a thing that I had never expected to do;

Sirin and I drinking a bottle of wine on an empty stomach at the revolving cocktail bar on the 48th floor of the Marriott on Times Square and bouncing off the walls on the way out, laughing all the way;

going up to Connecticut to spend the day with Margaret at her lovely home in Greenwich and going over to the island to meet her friends and enjoy the jazz band;

meeting up with Georgina and Kimberley, after such a long time apart, in New York and doing “touristy” things

Many, many memories and every one a treasure. You can’t buy that.