When Traveling Twitter is Your Best Friend
We were visiting my parents in Pennsylvania over Thanksgiving. The day before we were scheduled to go back to Austin our daughter got a stomach virus; she had a 104 degree fever and couldn't keep anything in her stomach. Realizing there was no way we could travel the next day I called the airline and spoke to an agent about our dilemma. She gave me the standard company line - we'd need to pay $150 change fee per ticket, plus any additional costs for the seats on the substitute flight. We could then contact the airline afterwards and provide them with a doctors note explaining that we couldn't travel on the day we'd booked and hope that they would refund us the nearly $800.00 in change fees and other charges.
"Couldn't I just send you the doctor's note now and get you to waive the fees on the front end?"
"No. I'm sorry. I can't do that."
"Ok thanks. I'll call back."
I remembered then that a friend of ours who travels frequently had told me that whenever he has an issue while traveling he would tweet at the airline directly. Next flight cancelled? No problem. He would arrange a substitute flight via direct tweets with the airline, sometimes even while still taxiing to the gate. So, I figured I would give it a try.
I opened Twitter and sent a tweet to the airline explaining the situation and what customer service had told me. Within 15 minutes I got a response. After answering a few questions about our preferred alternate travel days, they said, "Let me see what we can do." "Thanks!"
About 20 minutes later I received a tweet from the airline: "We're able to make a one time exception, and get your family on the same flights on the 29th. Does this work for you?" "Yes! That's great for us. Do you need anything from me or will you just rebook it?" "We'll rebook and send an email once it's complete. We're glad we can help."
And that was it. No change fees. No additional charges. No doctor's note. Just courteous and helpful service, like one might have gotten back in the good old days when you could check your bags for free and they served meals in coach.
I got one unsolicited follow up tweet. "We took a closer look, please check in with our Airport team tomorrow to update your boarding passes with your lap infant info." "OK. Thanks." "You're welcome."
Amazing.
We've used Twitter when traveling ever since. And, Twitter works for other customer service roadblocks you might encounter. We had a warranty issue with coffee maker and got nowhere with a series of emails with customer service. After a few tweets we got the email address of a point person who helped resolved the issue.
So remember, when traveling (or having a customer service issue), Twitter is a great way to get a direct line of communication with the airline and get faster resolution to your problems.
