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Contacting airlines has never been harder

Shopping for airfares on the internet has never been easier. Many airlines have streamlined their websites to make buying an airline ticket a matter of mere minutes. For many customers with quick questions or more intricate complaints, however, actually contacting the airline for some real customer service seems to be an increasingly difficult transaction.

 

Many airlines will provide a telephone number and postal address as their contact information. More often than not, however, those phone numbers are premium lines costing between 10 pence and £1 and offering lengthy and complicated automated answering services and long waiting times.

 

The Ryanair reservation contact numbers listed on the 'travel questions' page of their website charges 10 pence per minute for calls within the UK. The internet support lines, however, cost 1 per minute. According to a spokesperson for the airline, since all of the answers to any possible customer question can be found on the website, there is no need at all for an email contact.

 

Budget airline bmibaby similarly provides a phone number for the UK sales centre which costs 10 pence per minute and a postal address for customer relations but no email. In order to get to an email address for easyJet, customers must first go through a series of pages. In fact, the only airline which easily and directly provided quick email contacts, and a long list of them, at that, was Flybe.

 

According to James Fremantle of the Air Transport Users Council (AUC), airlines are not making contact easy enough for their passengers. "The reality is that airlines are not investing in dealing with after-sales services for customers. We think this is unacceptable and it's something we get many complaints about," he said. "Why should airlines impose these premium-line rates on passengers when the problems are usually their fault? It's disappointing that airlines bank the proceeds from premium calls but show little inclination to improve services."

 

 


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Jennifer Jones Editorial


03/12/2007



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