This all reminds me of the first 10 mins of the movie 'Anger Management'
YouTube - Dave Buznik gets a Small Misunderstanding. It would be funny except for the seriousness of the incident. I read that a customer who was erroneously accused of shoplifting at a Sydney department store successfully sued the company. Perhaps this passenger should consider the same thing. After all, the passenger has been falsely accused of disruptive behaviour on an aircraft.
The comment by stophostyhate was brilliant! Articulate, insightful and to the point.
I don't agree. Articulate, yes, but lacking insight in the role of cabin crew. I get the image here of a person who loves the industry, except for those pesky passengers. I agree with stophostyhate that the airline should provide free water. However the "unbundled" food and beverage service is exactly what the original Virgin Blue was about. This person then contradicts themselves by suggesting that a return to previous values would be a good thing. Either Virgin should give people free water or not. stophostyhate is not being consistant.
Further:
Did the Crew handle this as best they could? Possibly not, but what were their options?
a. Give the Guest a glass of water and be performance managed, or,
b. Don’t give the Guest a glass of water and be performance managed.
Some lateral thinking would have provided other options. Giving a passenger a glass of water does not automatically result in being "performance managed". Jeez..just give the passenger a paper cup and tell them to help themselves to the tap for chrissake! Needlessly calling the police instead of using some common sense: now
that gets you Performance managed.
This Guest also has some questions to answer:
No stophostyhate, the passenger/guest does
not have any questions to answer. Not to you or anyone. There is no place for such an attitude in customer relations. It is not the role of airline staff to interrogate passengers. I am sure that stophostyhate's employer spent a lot of effort in training Human Factors and it should be evident that a traveler who is thirsty and has had water taken from them (not all security checkpoint invoke a 100 ml restriction on LAGs. eg: LAX) is not going to be happy. The customer service role look after the passenger-who pays your wage?
Why didn’t you buy water airside after having your water taken prior to boarding, presumably at the security check point?
There could be many reasons for this. Lack of currency for one. Maybe the shop was closed.
- Why, after traveling from Perth to Phuket where water also gets confiscated at the security check point, did you try to breach the 100ml rule?
You cannot expect pax to know the rules for LAGs as thoroughly as airline staff. Last week I saw security take a bottle of water from cabin crew in Sydney. Nobody is perfect.
-
Why, after traveling from Perth to Phuket, on a credit card only service, did you complain about not having a credit card for the return journey? How did you pay for your ticket? How did you pay for your hotel? How did you pay for your duty free?
Maybe the passenger maxed out their credit card in HKT. Maybe they lost it. Who knows.
The letter of reply extends an apology for bad customer service on the part of the crew and quite rightly, too. It is the only point in the whole sorry saga where the customer has been extended any justice or due consideration.