French Word(s) of the Day: le service client (luh serh-vees clee-ont)- customer service

I recently got a promotion at work.  (This is why I haven’t updated in a month.)  I now work for the travel department, and I love it.  It’s busy, it’s crazy, everyone’s insane, but it’s great.  Travel is the best!

Well, sometimes travel is the best.  My latest chemo experience spilled over into my work and personal life.  I was supposed to go to my brother’s graduation, but there was a problem with chemo scheduling.  They had to give me my chemo the day before his graduation.  As a result, I had to cancel my flight and miss it.

Luckily, Brendan thinks graduation ceremonies are tedious and overrated (and he didn’t attend mine), so I’ve been forgiven.

Now that I’ve had to cancel my flight, I’m trying to get a refund. This is proving to be a very difficult experience.  I have a theory that the airline purposefully tries to sabotage all refund requests so that they never have to refund anything.

Long story short, I had to call customer service today… an AUTOMATED customer service number.  (My favorite online comic did a comic that accurately describes the horrific automated customer service experience.) My conversion with the customer service robot went like this:

Robot: Hello.  What would you like to do today?

Me: Real Person!  Person!

Robot:  I’m sorry; I don’t understand.  You can check a flight… [twelve more options]… or refunds. [None of the options are “speak to a live person.”]

Me: Refund.

Robot: I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you.  Please repeat that.

Me: REFUND

Robot: You would like to go to refunds?

Me: YES.

Robot: I’m sorry; I didn’t hear you.

Me: YES YES YES YES YES YES

Robot: You options are: check the status or make a new request.

Me: Check status

Robot: You can check the status online.  Go to our website. Can I help you with anything else?

Me: AGENT

Man: I’m sorry; I think you want to speak to an agent.

Me: YES

Man: I can’t connect you to an agent until I know more information.  [Repeats menu.]

It took the robot 5 more minutes to connect me to customer service.  I was then put on hold for 10 minutes.

Man: Hello!  Thank you for using our airline.  How can I help you today?

Me: I’m trying to get the refunds to work, and the site doesn’t recognize my refund number.

Man: Oh… umm… you need to talk to refunds.

Me: Yes, thank you.  I’m aware.  HOW DO I GET TO THEM?

Man: You get to them through us, actually!

Me: Great.  Can you transfer me?

Man: No, they only work until 4 pm from Monday- Friday.

Me: ….

Man: And you have to call us back.  We are the only way to reach them.

Me: There’s not a direct line or an email or something?!

Man: No, but if you’d like, there’s a feedback portion on our website!

You know I’m going to the feedback portion of their website.  I’ve got a LOT of feed to back.

The good thing is that I get to call them back and go through it all again sometime during my work hours tomorrow.

I drew this while I was on hold:

Sidenote: My Aunt Kathy went to my chemo session with me because my Mom was at Brendan’s graduation, and we had a lovely time!  She brought me pain au chocolat because she knows the way to a girl’s heart.