Friday 26 September 2008

The Wait

LC1, f2.4, 1/15, ISO 100, JPG, 90mm

After my flight got cancelled yesterday I had to go and try my luck again today. It all started fairly well and I passed through security in no time. Unfortunately this is where it stopped. Having already lost a day at Photokina through the cancellation I hoped to at least be able of meeting friends in the evening. But thanks to the incompetence of Easyjet the flight was over 4h delayed. If everything goes well you think Easyjet is quite good but as soon as something goes wrong you'll find out how good a company really is.
Easyjet is very bad, completely unorganized, unfriendly and unhelpful staff and no offer of compensation. They delay a plane for 45 mins at first, then another hour and finally started to swap times around but didn't know what's going on. Their only offer of compensation was after people complained to issue food vouchers. What might sound good at first turned out to be a bad joke. Giving people only a meagre 3 GBP voucher might be ok in other countries but in the UK this does not even allow you to buy a sandwich. This does not quite fit within the European regulations which demand an 'appropriate compensation based on the duration of the wait'. Guess they thought recommending people to go and buy a cheese burger at McDonald's is good enough. It might be if the 3 GBP would also buy you a drink with it.
Anyway, enough rambling on. Can't wait for Photokina tomorrow but this was the last time I used Easyjet, now I just hope I can get my compensation from them. Can't recommend using them at all, very bad service. Better pay a bit more with a decent airline.

5 comments:

  1. This must be so frustrating. You're eager to go, and then you're exposed to all sorts of delay's. It seems like it gets harder to go the mainland. And I hope for you that you still made it to Cologne.

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  2. Thanks Wouter. It was really frustrating but I made it there and it was more than worth all the hassle. Need to write the report now.

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  3. Good luck with your writing, Cristi.

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  4. I´m glad to here that in the end you made it to Cologne and had a good time. I recommend you to send Easyjet a written account of your problems; my experience is that airlines respond generously once they have a letter on the desk. May be different with low-cost airlines, though.

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  5. Thanks dlc, the European regulations say taht all airlines have to give passangers a compensation. It's just that low cost airlines try to make it as difficult as possible so people don't ask for money back. They won't have any luck with me though ;).

    Yesbuts, this was exactly what I said on Friday :).

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