All in the space of 20 minutes….

This is a rant so please forgive the indulgence.

So I left the UK to fly half away across the world to meet my daughter in Sydney to fly on together to Queenstown, New Zealand on QF121 on Sunday 8th February 2015.

Being the organised person that I am, weeks if not months ago I selected seats for Helen and on on flight QF121 in 17a and 17c on the basis we may end up with an empty seat between us and if not I was a confident a passenger would willing trade a middle seat for an aisle or a window.

So at the gate in I was told I had been moved to 11c. When I queried the matter and explained I hadn’t seen my daughter for 5 weeks and I had very deliberately selected seats I was referred to the gate supervisor.

This lady was addressing another matter in relation to a non English speaker sat in an emergency row was clearly not coping with the pressure. I could have coped with her putting a hand in my face and telling me to be quiet because she had 3 things to deal with. I was a little upset at the ‘you either sit in the seats we have now put you in or you don’t fly’ statement. But really has led me to embark on this rant is the fact after I emphasised the point that I had booked (and paid) for these seats weeks ago she first radioed the dispatcher to reallocate me back to my original seat, reissued the the boarding card in my original seat and told me everything was fine and then in the time it took me to get from the gate to the plane she had re-radioed the dispatcher and told her to intercept me before boarding and place me back in 11c.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Angelina (or a name similar), deliberately lied to me to kick the problem down the road to get rid of me. Since when has telling a customer a deliberate and such obvious lie been considered acceptable customer service practice?

So now I am upset at been moved without consultation, being lied to and I am stuck at the bottom of the stairs of an aircraft ( having spent the previous 24 hours flying from London) with a female dispatcher basically shrugging her shoulders at being dumped on and a male supervisor basically unwilling and unable to do anything to do anything apart from saying he needs to get everyone sat down because he needs to get the plane away…..stitched up good and proper.

So once airborne I ask to speak to the cabin services manager. Now this young lady, Susie , got the service ethic totally right. I had already realised there was no easy or viable solution to solve the problem and opened my comments with such an observation. Susie bent down to my level, gave me excellent eye contact , listened and emphasised, didn’t promise anything she couldn’t deliver and over the space of the next 1/2 hour or so made a bit of a fuss of me and my daughter (now sat 6 rows in front).

Susie got it right, Angelina – or what ever her name is got it so, so wrong…

She has a representative of Qantas deliberately set out to mislead me to get rid of a problem….