Yesterday I wrote to Air France Customer Care:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to inform of a recent excruciatingly bad experience with Air France / KLM and to ask that you apologise and refund me for it.
The incident happened yesterday on the 29/12/10. I was traveling from New York to London and was delayed by the severe snowstorm in NYC, 25cm of snow in JFK. I was originally meant to leave on the 27/12/10 and arrive in London on the morning of the 28/12/10 but due to flight cancellations and rebookings only left New York on the evening of the 28/12/10 and took a flight to London via Dublin with Aer Lingus that was due to arrive in London at 11.40. This flight got delayed and I only arrived in Dublin at 13.30. My flight with KLM was from London Heathrow at 17.05 to Beijing via Amsterdam. It was not possible to make this connection. The Aer Lingus staff however, offered to book me to their 17.10 Amsterdam flight to make the connecting KLM flight to Beijing (21.25) that evening. This was all perfectly possible and would even have timed out well. The KLM/Air France representative at your ticket sales desk in Dublin however, a woman named Linda, would not issue me with the boarding pass for the Amsterdam – Beijing flight. She said the booking was non-changeable and that if I did not use the first part of the flight from London to Amsterdam the entire reservation would be considered as a ‘no show’ and cancelled. I told her about the snow in New York and the severe delays I had encountered and she made a sarcastic comment about their being ‘no snow here! It’s not our problem.’ I had the sense that she had the attitude of a person who enjoys saying no, that she was enjoying the power.
The fact that you have already taken my money for your booking and had reserved a place on the flight for me but were unwilling to issue me a boarding pass is what upsets me. The extreme inflexibility in the face of severe transport difficulties, inflexibility that would have cost you absolutely nothing at all, is plainly rude. The rude comments of your staff Linda only made this poor decision more annoying still. As a result of this I have now lost the entire booking: both my flight to China and the return flight back to the UK with Air France via CDG in April 2011. This alone has coast me £566. I have had to book a new flight. Needless to say, I have not booked this with you; I will travel with Turkish Airlines later today. What is more, I have lost time, I was due to start work in China on a project of mine and this is now delayed. All because Linda would not authorise a boarding card.
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