Sometimes your travel experience is so unbelievable, you have to let the world (as well as the company responsible) know.
We’ve dug around the Internet for the greatest complaint letters ever, and we promise you’ll laugh and cry in equal measure.
Make sure you read right to the end — the last one will have you in tears!
1) Bobby’s Uncomfortable Instruction
Bobby Freeman contacted Greater Anglia Rail Services about a refund he was due because of a cancelled train. Unfortunately, he didn’t receive his refund, and this was his response:
Dear Mr Songer
Thank you for your letter dated 12th of April, explaining that you are ‘unable’ to refund my ticket for my train that was cancelled in January, due to the fact that I did not apply within 28 days of the incident.
I have enclosed your letter and you will notice that I have taken the liberty of tolling it up very tightly which should make it easier for you to stick it up your a***.
Yours sincerely,
Bobby Freeman
2) Caribbean Chaos
How about this letter from someone who had a less than stellar time with LIAT The Carribean Airline:
Dear LIAT,
May I say how considerate it is of you to enable your passengers such an in-depth and thorough tour of the Caribbean. Most other airlines I have travelled on would simply wish to take me from point A to B in rather a hurry. I was intrigued that we were allowed to stop at not a lowly one or two but a magnificent six airports yesterday. And who wants to fly on the same airplane the entire time? We got to change and refuel every step of the way!
I particularly enjoyed sampling the security scanners at each and every airport. I find it preposterous that people imagine them to be all the same. And as for being patted down by a variety of islanders, well, I feel as if I’ve been hugged by most of the Caribbean already.
I also found it unique that this was all done on ”island time” because I do like to have time to absorb the atmosphere of the various departure lounges. As for our arrival, well, who wants to have to take a ferry at the end of all that flying anyway? I’m glad the boat was long gone by the time we arrived into Tortola last night – and that all those noisy bars and restaurants were closed.
So thank you, LIAT. I now truly understand why you are “The Caribbean Airline.”
P.S. Keep the bag. I never liked it anyway.
3) The Biggie…
What follows comes six months after Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary told shareholders the no-frills airline should henceforth try not to “unnecessarily piss people off”… Enjoy!
Posted by James Lockley on Facebook and reproduced courtesy of holidaysincornwall.com.
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 to provide 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 Ryanair 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 Ryanair 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 as ‘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 Ryanair has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer. Middle Gimp had clearly listened hard at Ryanair 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 Ryanair 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 Ryanair 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 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 halfway 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 Ryanair 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 onto 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 one hour and still at the airport 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 Ryanair customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breath air 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 Ryanair 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 Ryanair 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 Ryanair. 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 Ryanair 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 chequebook.
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 Ryanair and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’.
Regards
You bunch of…………….
DJ Lockley
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 Ryanair 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 from them, so it may be a waste of time after all.
