If JetBlue's reading this, guys, it's time to grok the blogosphere

Updated at 5:20 p.m. with comment from JetBlue

"The filthy, lying, money-grubbing whores we call...the airline industry."

(Credit: CNET News)

Now that's a headline.

Bill Baker, a technology publicist from Connecticut, was not about to mince words after JetBlue left him stranded by canceling his return flight from Portland, Ore.

"I wrote that when I was especially angry," said Baker, still seething one week later when we spoke. "I'm still pretty postal about it."

Here's the Reader's Digest version of what happened.

On July 23, Baker's red-eye to New York was twice delayed from its original midnight departure time. Then around 5 in the morning, JetBlue told waiting passengers that it had to cancel the flight because there was no crew to fly the plane. That announcement set off the invariable scramble at the service desk, where JetBlue offered either to refund the $229 return leg of Baker's trip--along with a $100 voucher--or put him on the next available flight to New York three days later. To add insult to injury, Baker would have to go out on a midnight flight.

But the story gets worse. While JetBlue said it was not responsible for finding sleeping accommodations, all the hotels Baker called were booked solid. JetBlue also informed Baker it was not going to book him on a different plane because it does not have inter-line agreements with other airlines.

The ending to this novella was pre-ordained: The only way out of town was going to be on Baker's tab--and so he paid $977 to fly back via Detroit on Northwest and Delta.

I was less intrigued by JetBlue's tin ear than by what happened next. We're long past the era when companies could cavalierly screw over their customers without risking public humiliation, and Baker knew what to do next. See, there's this thing called the Internet...

After getting nowhere fast with the customer complaint department on his demand for a full refund--"I got a reply back saying basically, "You're out of luck"--Baker put the entire blow-by-blow on his blog.

Turns out that JetBlue was also interested in what he had to say. Three days after going public, Baker heard back from JetBlue, which had been tracking his blog posts.

JetBlue offered him another $60 plus flight certificates worth $229. But no salted peanuts.

"I was completely up front with them the entire time when I spoke with JetBlue," Baker said. "I told them that I'm going to make some noise about this... I've been in business for 10 years and If I screw up, I tell my client--if I expect to retain their business. I understand that you can't be responsible for the weather, and I understand delays. But I told them it sounds as if (JetBlue) is selling a product that it can't support.

JetBlue still hasn't returned my calls to provide their side of the story (Note: JetBlue did get back to me after I posted this story. Their comment is below). But the incident reminded me of the lengthy hassle BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis encountered a few years ago after he attempted to get Dell to fix his malfunctioning computer. Jarvis was getting nowhere fast with the company's customer service division, so out of frustration he published an open letter to Michael Dell with this devastating opening: "The bottom line is that a low-price coupon may have gotten me to buy a Dell, but your product was a lemon, and your customer service was appalling."

Michael Dell and his minions obviously grok the changing nature of communication in the Internet age, and Jarvis received a full refund from the company less than a week after going public on his blog. What with the parlous state of the U.S. airline industry, one would assume they understand that they risk far more than the cost of a refund by allowing public conversation about their practices to wind up on the wrong side of the blogosphere.

In a filing with the FCC (PDF) earlier this year, Comcast claimed that bloggers constituted a sufficient check on bad behavior. (Touching, albeit self-serving in that Comcast was desperate at the time to keep regulators at bay.) More recently, The New York Times chronicled Comcast's efforts to engage bloggers in hopes of burnishing its reputation. The cable company finished dead last in the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index.

By the way, Baker told me, he was "a huge JetBlue fanboy" before all this happened.

Obviously, no longer.

Update: After posting this story, I heard back from Bryan Baldwin, JetBlue's manager of corporate communications, who says the company plans to take "another look" at Baker's claim.

"If we see what appears to be a big customer service problem, where we might not have followed through as we would like, we'll definitely get the right people involved and doublecheck," he said.

He also says one member of JetBlue's PR team is charged specifically with "tracking blogs and online conversations" to respond in case of customer dissatisfaction.

Maybe time to make a tweak?

(Credit: JetBlue)

[getwired]

It's really a shame - once upon a time, a guy who was passionate about customers started an airline. Then his airline gets smacked in the head due to weather related delays that they responded VERY poorly to - after which Neeleman crafted that Bill of Rights that now sounds comedic given the way Mr. Baker was treated. Then the guy who is passionate about the customer becomes the scapegoat for that failure. Once David Neeleman got punted, I saw JetBlue rapidly descend into "just-like-the-other-airlines-itis" - too bad it continues to ferment.

[Galaxy5]

The late flights due to congestion in New York are partially Jet Blue's fault; their jamming of JFK has hurt on-time performance at JFK for all airlines.

With no inter-carrier agreements, they need to pony up the cash for this guy. There's simply no excuse for the lack of options they presented him with, and they should have offered to send him a check for the costs he incurred getting home.

[terminalblue]

This sounds familar...let me take you back to the heady days of 2005...

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=orbitz_blows

[benjaminstraight]

Baker was mad.

[Island-Guy]

Thank you for the heads up. I was looking for tickets on Blue Jet and have definitely changed my mind. I will not book any flights on Blue Jet until they get a better reputation.

[TV James]

This is also the airline with the pilot who very gracefully landed the plane with the sideways landing gear while the passengers on board watched themselves on TV. Still get chills thinking about that, that was pretty awesome.

We'll be traveling to L.A. next month with a four year old and a four month old, our first time on Jet Blue. We have nothing but high expectations.

[M C]

This of course has nothing to do with the "blogosphere" - nada, zilch. If JetBlue never posted one word it wouldn't matter one bit.

Not without company-to-customer service.

Responding to Baker or Cooper or Jarvis should be the LEAST of JetBlue's worries - their response to Baker's problem, WHEN HE WAS HAVING IT, was what they needed to fix.

Period.

[HardwareGeeks]

I no longer fly jetblue because of this. I lost close to 700 dollars because of something similar, and because of jetblues screw up, I have been a loyal Delta Customer for nearly 2 years now with over 80,000 flown miles with them and I am a happy camper.

Thank you Jetblue for treating me bad and introducing me to Delta.

[kinowerken]

I stopped flying Jet Blue after being stranded in Los Angeles twice.

I fly Virgin America, which seems to still give a damn about its customers.

[j.e.buhler]

Jet Blue used to be an airline different from the old legacy carriers, with a high customer satisfaction rate but they made the same error they all do by growing at all costs. Once that happens they just can't deliver the customer promise any longer and the experience starts to deteriorate. In today's economic environment it's even harder to provide anything that could be called service.

Jet Blue's service is now as bad as it's stock price that has cost me a pretty penny since buying after their 2005 service disaster thinking it could hardly get worse. Boy was I wrong about that!

[interspeak]

The bottom line is that we consumers have absolutely no leverage. If we "threaten" to stop flying an airline, we're stuck with equally terrible options. The airlines don't have to provide good service because they all stink. We're stuck with trying to find the least awful experience.

[SMS88]

There's a big difference between airlines has many flights between the origin and destination (via multiple hubs), many aircraft, and many crews, and a budget airline that has no contingency plans for when things go wrong. Apparently Jet Blue is a wonderful airline when crews are in the right place at the right time, aircraft have no mechanical issues, and the weather cooperates. As soon as anything goes wrong and a flight is cancelled, they have no way to fix the issue other than bidding the affected passengers a fond farewell, and wishing them luck on reaching their destination. When a large airline has an issue, there is usually something that can be done to get passengers to their destination within a somewhat reasonable time.

Other short-lived airlines have had similar problems, i.e. People's Express and World Airways. It seems that too many people think that it's really easy to run an airline, when it's not.

[KStrand11]

I had a nearly identical experience just this past Friday trying to return to Portland OR from Syracuse when our flights were cancelled due to "storms" and "traffiic" at JFK. After being bumped for several days in a row from the "next available" flight Jet Blue gave us as the only option for leaving Syracuse (with a 7 hour lay over at JFK to prevent missing the western connection) - that somehow, others had priority seating for day after day above us -we gave up. in fact, if we had not rented a car, driven to Albany NY to fly Southwestern back to Portland, we would still be waiting to see if the first available flight Jet Blue was willing to arrange for us (Monday, tomorrow, 3 days after the cancellation with the great lay over) would take us home. We ended up paying 250% of the initial fare, plus meals and accommodations, plus lost work revenue, and I still do not see the refund on the credit card, which of course in this electronic age takes 2 weeks to process. No offer of a gift card or other discount, in fact, we are being refunded significantly less than half the round trip fare - assuming that refund shows up.

Certainly I understand weather and traffic delays. But no flights out of then sunny Syracuse at all, anywhere? We were told that all other flights were full for 3 days with stranded Jet Blue passengers. It seems the only business arrangements Jet Blue has is with the local hotels or car rental agencies.

I wanted to like this airline, I paid more for its fare than some other choices I had due to what I thought was a convenient schedule and for the relatively new aircraft. But passengers fly in order to arrive at a destination - not to hang out at airports for days on end. I have been flying for many years to many locations in all kinds of weather and delay situations but have never been so badly served.

[SMS88]

My mother and stepfather had a similar experience with JetBlue.

My mom (83) and her husband (79) were scheduled on JetBlue 1402 from SFO to FLL on July 9th, 2008. When they got to the airport, they were informed that the flight was canceled due to mechanical problems.

JetBlue told them that they could take a taxi to OAK and get a Jet Blue flight to JFK and then a Jet Blue flight to FLL, but that Jet Blue wouldn't pay for the taxi, and the taxi ride was about $90. The airline wouldn't schedule them on the next day's flight 1402 because it was already full. They wouldn't rebook them onto another airline (JetBlue doesn't do this). They wouldn't pay for a hotel or meals (no point I guess, since they wouldn't rebook them for the next day anyway because the flight was full for several more days). The only thing JetBlue would do was to refund half the cost of the round-trip ticket. They had to buy a full fare one-way ticket on another airline. The one-way Continental flight cost much more than the whole round-trip on JetBlue.

Apparently there are no longer any rules that require that an airline get you to your destination. They are free to simply give you your money back and tell you to get lost. It's a real problem with airlines like JetBlue that have very few flights to each airport they serve. This is one reason why JetBlue is suddenly gaining such a bad reputation. Getting half your money back (for the return leg of a round-trip) and having to buy a last-minute, full-fare ticket on a regular airline really sucks. Of course having to buy a last minute round-trip ticket would also suck.

There are other issues with JetBlue too. They recently had someone arrested because she wouldn?t delete a video clip she took of an altercation between passengers on a plane. They made one passenger fly in the lavatory.

[BentFranklin]

I too have had enough of companies selling things they know they can't deliver, or being unwilling to absorb the full cost of their side of a bargain. It's not enough that JetBlue, or any company, deigns to fix the problem of one vocal customer, as I'm sure Mr. Baker is well aware. Criticism of a company should continue until the company changes its behavior to all of its customers in similar situations. To maintain a decent pace of criticism and to ever have any hope of really knowing if an effect has been made requires making such a thing a serious hobby or even a minor compulsion. (But a compulsion for fairness, so it's all good.) So kudos to Mr. Baker's hobby/compulsion. Dedication like that is rare in any form.