Airlines: The Quintessential Bad UX?

Perhaps it’s because travel stresses us out. Perhaps it’s because many aspects of travel cut so close to the bottom of our personal Maslow’s Need Hierarchy (food, shelter, security). Perhaps it’s because travel so often is imbued with our hopes (I’ll sell $2M to the prospect in Topeka!) and dreams (Tuscany at last!).

Whatever the reason, people seem to get VERY PASSIONATE about their bad travel experiences. Mine? How ’bout the support guy named “Chris” in Madras informing me that I am “Veeeerrrrryyyy happpppeeeee” that Delta took my miles transfer money instantly but would not be transferring the miles for a couple of weeks, or our interesting and loosely defined-by-Delta weekend in Cleveland*.

Bill Baker is so passionate about his bad experience with JetBlue that he’s suing them in small claims court and blogging about it! What fun. In Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, he explains how the internet made it possible for vengeance to be wrought (against all likelihood) after a cell phone was stolen. Let’s see how Bill does vs JetBlue now that he’s got Time’s Person of the Year (You) and me on his side.

* Ahh, Cleveland. It’s actually a fun city, with many inner-city neighborhoods experiencing a revitalization that extends to their nightlife…or so we hear. We were flying up Thursday, early enough to hit a jazz club and then explore some cool ‘hoods before heading to rural Ohio later Friday for an event. When we got to the departure gate, we were all informed that there’d be a 20 minute delay b/c the crew was coming off another plane. OK, cool. Some time later, we were all informed that they had LOST THE CREW. They thought they were in the building; it’d be another 20 minutes. Long story short, they 20 minutes-ed us into several hours during which they found the crew! they lost them agan! they were getting another crew! the other crew was making its way to us! Finally we boarded and prepared to push back. And a maintenance guy appeared in the front of the plane and had some convo with the cockpit. Guess what? They had taken so long to get us a crew, that the plane would not make it back to Atlanta in time for a government mandated service window. The pilot actually took a stand for the forces of good; he came on and said something about it not being fair and him taking us to Detroit anyway (what???) and they’d just have to service the plane there. He lost. Delta asked us all to troop a couple of concourses down to another plane we could use. At this point, it was going to be too late to go out in Cleveland, so we tried to rebook for the morning, figuring we’d save the cost of a night’s hotel, get a good night’s sleep at home, and start fresh in the morning. Oh, no, Delta would not allow that. So we go to the other concourse, and guess what? We lost the crew. We could see the plane out on the tarmac, but all its lights were off and there were no Delta employees anywhere. In the end, we got to Cleveland around 2 am, on a flight originally scheduled to arrive around 6:30 pm.

I asked James why they couldn’t get us a plane/crew and delay a different flight, minimizing the pissed-off-ness of both crowds. He wisely explained that it was in Delta’s best interest to REALLY piss off the passengers who were already pissed off than to slightly piss off more people. He explains it better.

But wait, there’s more!

Our return trip was scheduled for Sunday evening around 6:30. Yes, they do a round trip from Atlanta to Cleveland and back. Or they would if they ever got their shit together. Sure enough, the plane from Atlanta was delayed. The gate agent told us it would probably depart around 2 am (how often do they screw this route up that they know what horrific time it will actually occur?) When pressed, the agent admitted that the chances of a plane flying from Cleveland to Atlanta at 2 am were “very small”. He agreed to put us up at the Fairview Park Ramada, which includes a club called “Froggys”. I’m not sure when those photos were taken, but it was evidently before the mold/beer/cigarette smoke/filth/bedbugs/Stevens party arrived. But at least they were finally honest about the fact that Delta does not give a crap about its Atlanta/Cleveland route.

That’s one of Bill’s points on his blog: if you aren’t going to service a route properly, don’t service it at all. Rock on, Bill!!!

Originally found on brandflakesforbreakfast.

Really bad UX turns into really good UX (and even some sucking up!)

I had a really bad user experience today. I looked at my bank account online and saw that Symantec had helped itself to 39 of my dollars for automatically renewing my antivirus. Hello? I never, ever authorize automatic withdrawals, so somewhere in the AV install I did last summer, auto-renewal sneakily authorized itself. It was probably in the click wrap that I agreed to without ever reading. God knows what all I’ve agreed to over the years.

I consider this bad UX because a) I really never do automatic withdrawals, so they really must have hidden the option (defaulted to “Yes! take my money!”) pretty well, and b) as a corporation, it’s stupid, because of the cost involved in dealing with all the people who call bullshit on that and ask for their money back. There’s the support call, plus whatever costs are associated with returning the money, including people resources and actual transaction costs. Maybe they make it back in float. After all, it’s going to be 6 working days before I get my cash back.

All my animosity toward Symantec turned around, however, during the second really excellent (probably offshored) tech support interaction I can recall in my lifetime*. All websites try to hide the link or email address for support. You can’t really blame them. If you’d just read the FAQs, you might just find your answer. After I found the link to a support online chat and completed a form to identify myself, the chat widget informed me that I was 54th in line.

Now, at this point, you’d think I’d be pissed: 54th!! But happily, I’m rocking the dual monitors and just kept surfingworking during the 30-ish minute wait. Eventually Sudeep The Support Guy joined me, and with a minimum of fuss did whatever magic necessary to refund my money. I didn’t have to grovel or bitch or anything!

BUT HERE’S THE BEST PART: Sudeep flattered me. He made me feel very good about my excellent complaining skillz. (Yeah, yeah. I know he sucks up to all the girls.) I have a screen cap (below). Since this was the best thing that’s happened to me so far today, I flattered him back and even gave him a smiley. I’m sure he made a screen cap too. When was the last time you had such a good user experience in the support domain? Yep, we’re all eating rainbows and farting butterflies today! 

*If you’ve read this far, you must be DEAD bored today and have absolutely nothing else to do besides read about the FIRST good support experience I had, coincidentally enough, just last week, and also involving automatic withdrawals from my bank account. OK, so I LIED about never ever authorizing auto withdrawals. Sue me. I was forced into auto withdrawal when my son joined ToonTown years ago. They insist on reaching in and grabbing $9.95/mo for him to play innocent Disney MMORPGs. ToonTown is the gateway drug for future online gaming addicts. I got to speak to an actual human who I believe was actually in America, which is notable only for its rarity. HERE’s where it gets amusing: she could not for the Disney life of her understand that I wanted to discontinue ToonTown because my son had grown out of it. How could anybody grow out of frolicking with Piggledy Miggledorf? I had to convince her that his tastes now run more to blowing people’s heads off for fun and profit in WOW and Call of Duty. She still didn’t get it (“HE’s GROWING UP!” I insisted). But she very nicely stopped the auto-withdrawal madness anyhow. See? There is good customer support out there.