Gogo and Delta: Two terrible customer service experiences in one day
Terrible experience #1: Gogo is a (potentially) great new service, if you haven't had the chance to try it. Wifi in flight, allowing access to everything Internet: email, web, company portals. But this week's experiences really have me wondering. (Hmm, how do I do share this quickly?).
Try this: Gogo sells its service. People who need it, buy it. Like me. This month, in conjunction with Google to promote Chrome, Google's browser, Gogo is giving away the service free. All month.
Guess what. That means customers who have paid for the service can't use it. Limited bandwidth; shortened sessions. Even worse - so overloaded, you can't even get on line. Imagine how that makes a paying customer feel. So, time that I expected to use productively got wasted. Risked deadlines, delayed communications with important customers. Great execution, guys (please, don't miss the sarcasm).
Terrible experience #2: This one borders on unethical and perhaps even illegal. Late last evening, I got on Delta.com to book a flight New Year's weekend. I searched on the site and found a $169 r/t fare. Great! I enter in my daughter's information (I was already logged in), hit enter, put in payment information (it was quick, as my credit card is stored on the site), hit enter and - Presto! - No, not booked tickets. A message from Delta that, in the three minutes since I searched and selected the flights, the fare had changed from $169 to $285 per ticket (what!?!?!). Yep, over $100 increase while I was in the middle of booking and after Delta had shown me that the fare was available. Of course, I discarded those tickets and started again. Guess what? THE SAME THING HAPPENED TWO MORE TIMES! Found a fare (they kept inching higher and higher), went to book it, and - Whammo! What a scam. What terrible customer service!
No, I don't cut them any slack for "limited capacity." Ticketmaster has figured it out. Ticketmaster has a clock in the lower corner of the page. Finish this page in x minutes or lose the seat. It goes, different times on each page as the transaction progresses, until the tickets are bought. Don't tell me Delta couldn't do the same thing and protect the integrity of its searches, its ticket prices, and its reputation.
No, I'm afraid we are seeing more and more of the companies who think they are too (pick one:) big/smart/innovative/exciting/important to fail. I wonder what history will say about that.
The Observation...
...has nothing to do with bad customer service, but the recent deal to extend unemployment benefits. I'm all for protecting and taking care of each other - really. I'm pretty darn liberal that way. But, can't we ask people to do something for the money? So, there aren't jobs in private industry right now. Aren't there things that people could do to help? Can't there be programs established so the money doesn't just go for nothing? Who knows, maybe some people would look a little harder for work if even unemployment benefits came with working hours requirements. Isn't that what created the WPA?
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