I’ve flown with Spanair now enough times to know that I’m not thrilled by their customer service.  But at the end of the day they are still one of the most convenient ways to fly from Germany to Lanzarote, via Madrid, without entering the world of budget or charter flights, which either leave from airports much further away or quite simply cost more.

So when booking flights recently, I still took them into consideration on the grounds that I at least know what I’m getting.

Except that they have now gone to new lengths to persuade me not to do it again, by moving my flight by one whole day!

“Please contact us to help you find an alternative flight, we will be pleased to help you” said the e-mail.  So I did.

I was told that the flight time had changed, and I would not make my connecting flight, so I had to fly a day later then the connection would be possible.  Sounds silly?  Because it is.  I checked later myself and found out that my flight had been cancelled completely, and I had simply been transferred onto the next available one.

It even transpired, that they hadn’t actually transferred my connecting flight to the next day, and this would be leaving a day before my new arrival time.  “You are staying overnight in Madrid?” the agent asked me.  No, as much as I like Madrid, staying there makes no sense if my flight has already left.  They needed to change that as well!

But in the heat of the moment I asked if there was not an alternative to avoid changing dates.  “Yes, you could fly a day earlier via Bilbao” was the answer.

Not really the best solution either.  I even considered taking a refund and re-booking with someone else.  But in the end I said I would need to think about it.

So far, so good.  Except I then asked if there was another number I could call, because it was not really my problem that they had moved the flight and I did not see why I should have to take on the cost of calling Spanair’s not-so-cheap phone number.

“We are a Spanish company” the agent blankly told me.

So?  I pointed out that I took that into account when I booked with them, but their number cannot be called using Skype, so it was an international – and expensive – call.  At the very least, she could give me a normal Spanish number.

“We are a Spanish company”, the agent repeated.

OK, I had had enough.  I repeated in Spanish that it was not my problem that were changing my flights by a whole day, and that I wanted someone to find a reasonable solution for me.

“Next time, you fly Lufthansa” the agent replied and hung up!

Quite apart from being a very rude way to deal with a customer, it really is a shame that she hung up, as I would have liked to tell her what it means to fly with Lufthansa.

In fact, it makes almost no difference whatsoever, as Lufthansa at present does not normally fly to Lanzarote – they codeshare with Spanair.  But then, perhaps the call-centre agents are friendlier?

Tags: flights, Lufthansa, spanair

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 30th, 2011 at 2:05 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.