The best complaint letter ever....

I had to be careful when somebody sent this to me...as I nearly forwarded it on FB, as Ryanair are actually a client of mine...but still, read it and laugh.


Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing for the attention of your customer experience team. I am definitely a customer, and believe me, you didn’t fail providing us with an experience.

My wife and I had booked to fly from Stansted on the Thursday 17th April, evening flight to Bratislava. After 2 hours of fun, fun, fun, stuck on the M25 doing 20 mph, we arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there.

We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake. He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait and all would be ok. We stood patiently in the line for 20 minutes. We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to a Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight and we had missed it. We complained that we had done as instructed and she said it was the child’s fault because he should have advised her that we were trying to board a closing flight and that because he hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane.

Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well,…… After establishing that the child had not informed Vacant we were here, and Vacant had forgotten to do a last call and that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was in fact a Customer Shouting Desk. We complained and requested the attention of a manager.

Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out. He was so aggressive I can only assume he had accidentally inserted something sharp into somewhere private and been unable to remove it before he came to work. He was definitely a middle Gimp. I know this as Vacant and Not That Bright were clearly quite scared of him, and he can’t have been a Big Cheese as he was talking directly to customers and we all know from the papers that no-one in Big Cheese management at Ryan Air has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer.

Middle Gimp had clearly listen hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence.

‘Check in opens 3 hours before the flight’ he barked repeatedly as if it was the answer to every question in life. We tried to ask Middle Gimp direct questions about why it was necessary for us to miss the flight because the Child had forgotten to do his job, and Vacant had forgotten to do hers.

‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?.

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘What colour are my trousers?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘My tinkle is hurting, could you take a look if I promise not to tell anyone?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

Middle Gimp then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well,…… Middle Gimp then insisted we go to customer the Customer Shouting Desk, as he was definitely not going to do anything else. This was handy as the queue was very long so that by the time we would reach the front the plane would be half way to Bratislava and the problem would be solved.

We waited patiently in line as customer after customer stood at the desk to hear the same song;

‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’

We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that Middle Gimp had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage and there were no other Middle Gimps around. We would have to book in to the flight for the next day and we would have to pay £110 each to change the ticket. When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the air port and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate. We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk.

We waited patiently in the very long queue yet again for about 40 minutes to discover the nice lady had also gone home now so we had to explain the whole thing again to a new lady that looked like all the joy had been removed from her life at birth. She recited the Ryan Air customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breather and stay alive.

‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’

She recited it with perfection, Middle Gimps across the world would have been in awe and the effectiveness of the techniques taught in Middle Gimp School. Seeing no other option but to hand over all our cash and come back the next morning we happily paid and got new flights.

As the new flight was at 6.25am in the morning we decided to get a hotel, we paid £79 for a room and got a taxi.

So, our customer experience was insightful and liberating. From the incompetent Child with a brain so full of girls and Vauxhall Corsa modifications he couldn’t actually listen or speak, through Vacant and Not That Bright who decided on reflection that anything they did wrong was our fault for not pointing it out to them, right through Middle Gimp who made a Tasmanian Devil look calm and Zen like, and the sad one, oh so sad, having every last drop of life sucked out of her by her chosen career at the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk. I very nearly jumped over the desk just to give her a cuddle and tell her everything would be alright if she could just muster the will to leave the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk and find a more fulfilling job, like starting the very first Israeli pork pie factory, or being a parking attendant in Tower Hamlets, or in fact just resigning herself to a slow and uncomfortable death would have been indistinguishable from the current position and would require much less effort.

The net result of this ‘experience’ was;

New Flights – £220
Hotel £79
Taxi x 2 £50
Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35

1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this.

1 x very angry and upset wife, in particular with Middle Gimp for being so unbelievably rude.

1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss, because Child and Vacant are clueless at best and Middle Gimp has anger management issues.

So, thank you Ryan Air for a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I have watched a program called the news so I fully expect this to land on the desk of the customer services team underneath the empty bottles and sandwich wrappers that you also file there. You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book.

I sincerely doubt you will do anything about this, compensate us, apologise, or even respond according to the news, so I have sent this recorded and sign for delivery to absolutely confirm my opinion of Ryan Air and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’

Regards

You bunch of…………….

P.S. Maybe Middle Gimp in particular, but Child, Not That Bright, and Vacant should purchase one of your reasonable priced tickets and go to Slovakia (assuming they were actually allowed on the plane. The Ryan Air employees there are smart, clever, bilingual, helpful, and polite and they should in my opinion experience an example of how they should do their job. The Slovak staff could explain it to them, but they wouldn’t be able to understand it for them, so it may be a waste of time after all.

I think I've flown with them once when I went to Ireland on a stag do. I really don't understand why people book with them and complain afterwards.

Sometimes Dawg, they're the only flights available on certain days.

I've only used them twice myself.  Once was for my honeymoon to Rome, had to fly from John Lennon Airport, but the airport in Rome was the old Air Force strip which is actually closer to the city!  Second time was to go to Dublin.  Neither flight was traumatic at all, but then I do try and allow for traffic, so I'm not panicking about these things.

Leave enough time for your journey and if it includes one of the busy motorways then add at least another hour.  I'd rather be sat at the airport twiddling my thumbs than in the back of a taxi getting stressed out about how long it's taking.

I've flown loads of times with them (hazard of the job and the fact that they pay for my flights)...and to be fair, I've never had a delay or a bad flight. They've built up a reputation that is hard to shrug off, so any problems get magnified.

Easyjet on the other hand...I've flown with loads and most of my nightmare experiences of being stuck at airports for hours on end, with no info, has been with them.

Still, you fly enough, you'll have have a bad experience or two over the years.

Thought letter was funny as well.

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/09/its-more-likely-that-i-was-doing-911kmh.html

I flew with them to Belfast from Newcastle 8 years ago thought they were ok nothing special but nothing bad about them either.

Only flown with Ryan air once & will never again. Worst airline I've ever used.
In fact they made Easyjet look like Cathay Pacific

TMG wrote:Only flown with Ryan air once & will never again. Worst airline I've ever used.
In fact they made Easyjet look like Cathay Pacific

You sure they did?

I guess we can only go on our ow experiences. If we've been lucky with an airline, we think they're good. Qatar Airways - a load of old tosswank.

Qatar? Guess you weren't in Business then Dawg?

It wouldn't have mattered if I was in 1st class Bluey, they totally fucked us around.

I used to fly to Dubai (from Manchester) on a Thursday evening, to arrive in Dubai on Friday morning about 6.30. I took a return flight on to arrive back in Manchester on Tuesday morning. We had to stop in Doha for two hours, but this was ok as the times worked out really well for me and it was so cheap! 

This one time, there was a delay of a few hours. We were sure we'd miss our transfers, but we were re-assured that they would sort things out for us (hold the plane back or something) as there must have been 40-50 people in this position.

There was a late Emirates flight I could have switched to, but Qatar said we wouldn't miss our connection.

Anyway, turned up at Doha and the place was empty. 5 hour delay for our plane. They hadn't done anything at all, just lied to us in Manchester. Remember, lots of people were only going for a short time and I could have switched to Emirates.

So we are in Doha and they don't give a fuck about us. They offered us diddly squat. After some people complained, they eventually offered some people (not all) phone cards so that they could make some calls. All the shops were closed and were weren't offered anything to eat or drink. Eventually they let maybe 10-15 people in one of the lounges, but why not the rest? I went to the first class lounge and complained there and then got myself in the business class lounge. At least I had a comfy seat to try and sleep on and some food and drink.

When I sent in a letter of complaint about the lies and the shabby treatment, they offered me about $200 of discount vouchers for.....Qatar Airways!

That was 8 years ago and I never used the vouchers.

Here's another actual complaint letter that cracked me up.

Dear Sirs,

I'm in the process of renewing my passport, and still cannot believe this. How is it that Sky Television has my address and telephone number and knows that I bought a bleeding satellite dish from them back in 1977, and yet, the Government is still asking me where I was bloody born and on what date. For Christ sakes, do you guys do this by hand? My birth date you have on my pension book, and it is on all the income tax forms I've filed for the past 30 years. It is on my National Health card, my driving license, my car insurance, on the last eight damn passports I've had, on all those stupid customs declaration forms I've had to fill out before being allowed off the plane over the last 30 years, and all those insufferable census forms.
Would somebody please take note, once and for all, that my mother's name is Mary Anne, my father's name is Robert and I'd be abso-fucking-lutely astounded if that ever changed between now and when I die!!!!!!

I apologise, I'm really pissed off this morning. Between you an' me, I've had enough of this bullshit! You send the application to my house, then you ask me for my fucking address !!!!

What is going on? Do you have a gang of Neanderthal arseholes workin' there? Look at my damn picture. Do I look like Bin Laden? I don't want to dig up Yasser Arafat, for shit sakes. I just want to go and park my arse on some sandy beach somewhere. And would someone please tell me, why would you give a shit whether I plan on visiting a farm in the next 15 days? If I ever got the urge to do something weird to a chicken or a goat, believe you me, you'd be the last fucking people I'd want to tell!

Well, I have to go now, 'cause I have to go to the other end of the poxy city to get another fucking copy of my birth certificate, to the tune of £30. Would it be so complicated to have all the services in the same spot to assist in the issuance of a new passport the same day?? Nooooooooooooo, that'd be too damn easy and maybe makes sense. You'd rather have us running all over the fuckin' place like chickens with our heads cut off, then have to find some arsehole to confirm that it's really me on the damn picture - you know, the one where we're not allowed to smile?! (bureaucratic fuckin' morons) Hey, do you know why we couldn't smile if we wanted to? Because we're totally pissed off!

Signed

An Irate Citizen.

P.S. Remember what I said above about the picture and getting someone to confirm that it's me? Well, my family has been in this country since 1776 ........ I have served in the military for something over 30 years and have had full security clearances over 25 of those years enabling me to undertake highly secretive missions all over the world. ........
However, I have to get someone 'important' to verify who I am - you know, someone like my doctor WHO WAS BORN AND RAISED IN FUCKING PAKISTAN !

Sincerely,

Read that before, very good.

blueboy wrote:Easyjet on the other hand...I've flown with loads and most of my nightmare experiences of being stuck at airports for hours on end, with no info, has been with them.

I've flown with Easyjet for the last 5yrs on my golfin trips and upto now not had a single problem with them.....long may that continue, as i fly with them again next Feb

That's the point Shaken. If you fly once, maybe twice a year with an airline...what's the chances of you being seriously delayed or the flights cancelled? Slim.

The more you fly, then the more chance you will have of having a bad experience.

Now, if it's your first time with a particular airline and you get a bad delay, or poor service, then of course, your experience won't be a good one, nor will you think highly of them.

I'd flown with Qatar a few times before that incident. When staff lie to you and couldn't give two shits about you, you tend to form lasting bad impressions. I lost half a day and was knackered. I felt particularly sorry for the couple that were going off to RAK knowing that they had several hours in a taxi to look forward to. They were only staying a few days so their holiday was ruined.

Guess that's the problem...when people don't tell you the truth, or give you no information.

That's it bluey. They said we wouldn't miss our connection. Based on that info, I didn't fly with Emirates instead. Then they just dumped us in Doha and basically told us to fuck off. There wasn't much we could do stuck over there.

Unfortunately, it's the crew that end up getting the brunt of passengers frustrations...and the thing is, apart from the crews 'home' base, they don't even know the ground staff or ever speak to them, apart from the dispatcher...