Sorry, you're too late

So I thought, I known - I'll go somewhere sunny for Christmas. But it was Sunday December 20th, so it would be a last minute booking. So I went to latedeals.co.uk. Trouble was, I could only book a date from the 24th. Presumably there are no flights leaving the Uk on Monday 21st, Tuesday 22nd or Wednesday 23rd?

Let them eat cake

In my books I advise having a 'local' person check translations for global websites. Here's and example from ebay where a term has got lost in translation ... 

 PS if the title of this post has confused you - Google it, it's your history lesson for the day :-)

Twitta-vert

For reasons I won't go into [it was professional  :-) ] - I searched for "Katherine Jenkins" on Google - and near the top of the SERP was this:

Now ... this may not be representative of the songstresses Tweets - but this is not what social media is all about. Nor is it good social media marketing.

Hmmm, perhaps a little insensitive

Only a couple of weeks after the Paris atrocities, the normally excellent, eMarketer.com sent an email with this headline:

However, by accident or design, the linked-to article was:

It's the thought that counts

OK, so the value is negligable, but at least they made the effort. It was also a day early, but let's not get too picky :-)

But Google did get the right day ...

It's all Dutch to me

On my way back from Romania [see previous post]  I found myself - oh joy of joys - in Schiphol airport for 6 hours. Now, as airports go, it is as good as any [I've been there more times than I care to remember] - and like many places, it now offers free wifi [well, an hour free, after that you pay].

Naturally, you have to register - but the form was only available in Dutch. So when I couldn't make it work, I couldn't find out why.

eBay: just because I'm in Romania ...

... doesn't mean I can suddenly speak Romanian. As seen in a email to me while I was out of the UK.

There's got to be a way round this hasn't there? oh, and by the way eBay - Romania might be in the EU ... but they do not use the Euro.

As a footnote: Romanians will readily admit that their country is being slow in moving from the Communist era and there are many things that could be better. However - in my experience of four cities in the country - their WIFI knocks spots off that in many countries. And in three of the four hotels I stayed in no password was needed to access the WIFI ... it was just there when you wanted it.

Burying their heads in the sand?

After the tragic loss of life when a Russian airliner crashed in the Sinai desert, last night the UK government suspended all UK flights to or from Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

The story was of interest to me because I’m supposed to be going to Sharm next month – so I took a look at the websites of the three main UK tour operators for holidays in Egypt.

OK, so they may be using social media as their primary platform for communication on the issue, but not everyone uses the likes of Facebook and Twitter – so I would have expected better than this …

The first is from market leader, Thomson Holidays. Look carefully and you will see a link. Would you have seen it if I hadn't put a green ring around it? I didn't.

At least Thomas Cook have made the effort to but a bespoke header, but it still hardly shouts at you ... 

But worst is the company who actually specialise in holidays to Egypt. No matter how hard you look you won't see any mention of the flight ban because their is none - despite the fact that they must have customers 'stranded' in Sharm and many others due to fly out this week. 

UPDATE Nov 8th

Well, at least RedSea have got round to mentioning the problem - but it's not shouting off the page either. And the phones being out-of-order seems a little 'convenient'.

Ryanair: what complaint?

In a recent TV advert, Ryanair went to great efforts to shout about a Civil Aviation Authority [CAA] report which said the budget airline received fewer complaints than any other.

So .... me and some chums were off to Gdansk for a long weekend. The Ryanair flights were booked by one of the group - but I wanted extra legroom on the flights there and back so I went to the Ryanair.com [note: it's on a dot come, not .co.uk or .ie] to make the purchase. 

Everything went well until I got to the page where I chose my seat - and was able to see the price. 

Note how it is shown as 10.99 USD [United States Dollars]. An obvious bug? I thought so, but should I report it? Look what happened to someone who did a few years ago: Ryanair website bug: blogger called 'idiot and liar'.

Now ... I knew the price was around 10 pounds - which I was willing to pay - so I clicked on through to 'buy' and paid by PayPal. And if the charge had been 2 x £10.99 [£21.98] that would have been an end to it. But when I got my PayPal receipt, it was for £22.42. 

So ... I went to the Ryanair website and used the 'chat' facility [not considered to be a 'complaint' on that platform], and started a chat with 'Nandor'. I decided that I would start with the issue of the price being shown in USD. 

Notice how Nandor tells me I am wrong about the price being in USD, and ignores the issue of me being charged £22.42. His response to my reply was along the lines of the 'idiot and liar' case from the past ...

Having told me what I had seen [and recorded in a screenshot] was not possible, and that I could not pay a USD fee [he's obviously never purchased something online from the USA], he then referred me to the 'ryanair seat price.doc' - which was priced in pounds.

So ... I decided to take up his invitation, and filled in a 'contact form' [still not a 'complaint' for the CAA?]. I repeated what I had said in the 'chat'. And the reply was ...

I think my reply to 'Tudor' needs no explanation:

However - the reply was a 'standard' list of webpage addresses for the various range of complaints eg late flight, lost baggage etc etc. The closest one for my problem was 'Compliments or general complaints and queries, please click here http://frd.ie/help/ '. And when I clicked on it I found myself back at the blank form I had completed previously, to which 'Tudor' had replied. 

So I filled it in again,  but started with the reference number of the earlier form:

And do you know what? Big drum roll ...

Yep, no response. Does that mean the 'complaint' never existed?

So, could it be then that Ryanair get fewer complaints by the way they record them? Or not record them. For example; in this case, my 'complaint' was not treated as a complaint - but a request for information on the cost of seats with extra legroom.

I would normally use this as an exercise for students and ask them how Ryanair should have responded? But in this case, how about something like ...

OOPS ... we seem to have a glitch in our system, I'll let our tech team know. As you were shown the price in dollars that is what we should have charged you. At today's exchange rate that is £14.32. Also, the extra 44p is the charge for using PayPal - this is identified on the payment page, maybe we need to make the notice more obvious :-). I'll arrange for this to be waived in this instance also. You will receive a refund of £8.10 into you PayPal account shortly. I hope you had a good trip to Poland.

And do you know what? If that is what had happened, this post would be about how well Ryanair responded to a 'complaint' - and not the opposite. And if this gets listed high on Google [it might] ... that would have been £8.10 well spent.

Flying local

My complaints about KLM sending me offers to fly from anywhere-but-my-local-airport since this blog began 8 years ago [see poor geography], but they seem to have got their act in order with this latest email ...

However, if I want to be picky - why fill my email viewing pane with that picture which actually adds nothing to the offer or the appeal of the offer [in my books I condemn the use of 'hero shots'].