Last-Minute.Com - Customer Service problems

bishop_stoke

Thought i'd share with you fine money savers my first (and last) transaction with Last-Minute.Com. The following speaks for itself, but a brief resume of the problems is thus:

Planned (last minute aptly enough) to take my daughter to the London Aquarium for a change. We were traveling from Southampton by train and due to the freezing conditions decided to try and pre book the tickets to avoid standing outside in the cold with a 3.5 year old child.

Entered the details into my phones browser and up came Last.Minute. So, decided to take a chance and book (the 'saving' was a couple of quid, but wanted to avoid the queues mainly).... Anyway, here is the email I sent them after the event, which explains my feelings towards their customer care which I found in this instance to be something of an oxymoron:


Hi,

I used your service for the first time on Friday 21st January, 2011 and booked an adult ticket and a child ticket for the London Aquarium. Whilst I saved a couple of pounds, my motive was to avoid any queues as it was cold and I was taking a 3 year old child there. It cost £31.00 in total.

On receiving my email confirmation I noticed straight away that the date for travel was for today - 26th January. Unfortunately, I am very shortly going to hospital (in a couple of hours in fact) so today was not an option - I had in fact wanted the tickets for last Friday. I then telephoned the Aquarium to see if they would honour the booking but was told I needed to speak to you.

So, this is where the fun began. I rang your number and was told it was 10p a minute, then had my temper tested as I went through numerous 'multiple choice' options, some of them repeated and all done painfully slowly with 4 second gaps etc. Whilst I'm impressed at your ability at increasing profits, im not impressed that you assume people are dumb enough not to notice.

Eventually I got through to a lady, who was difficult to understand (on account of her being in Mumbai or somewhere like it) and I explained that I was to be taking my 3 year old daughter to London to go to the London Aquarium that day, and that somehow the dates had gone wrong and instead of having a booking for the 21st, I had got one for the 26th. She was very sorry about this naturally, even when I said it was probably my own error that had led to this.

So, I asked - "can you ammend the booking for today's date please - the London Aquarium have said they dont see a problem with doing this". Well, imagine my astonishment when your operator said NO. "terms and conditions you see, all bookings non amendable and non refundable"....... "but I'll be in hospital on the 26th"... Again, she was very sorry. Anyway, there then followed a conversation that I admit went along the lines of " Why cant you ammend it, the tickets dont even exist yet, its just a simple matter of tapping a few keys on a keyboard", which then led to a statement by me about crap customer service and companies hiding behind terms and conditions. On asking for the ladies name she was gone, to be replaced by music, which was rather annoying and at ten pence per minute not really worth the trouble of listening to and I hung up, which naturally was the desired effect.

Despite your best efforts,I went to the London Aquarium with my daughter and on showing my booking confirmation (the one you refused to ammend) and explaining about your disgraceful 'customer service' attitudes we were allowed to visit the attraction at no extra cost. So, despite your best efforts my daughter had a fantastic afternoon and I watched the sharks swimming around whilst thinking of you.

Now whilst I accept that I 'may' have made an error when booking (by android phone, so a bit of a challenge), and that my daughter and I did eventually get to visit the attraction we had paid you £31.00 to see I dont accept your cynical attempt at extracting more cash from me (automated telephone system), and I certainly dont accept that it is acceptable in a buyers market to have customer service reps hang up/cut off calls when asked for their name. I also do not accept there was any logical reason why the booking could not have been altered with a few taps on a keyboard, other than you thought you'd get something for nothing and maybe another booking fee.

What this has ensured however is two things:

That I now think Last-Minute.Com have a shocking attitude to their customers.

That whilst there are dozens if not hundreds of companies like yours, I'll never even consider using you again.

I'll be copying and pasting this email to a suitable website ('Money Saving Expert' I expect) as a warning to others, but in the interests of fairness (unlike yourselves) will also post your reply, assuming you can be bothered to send one.

Yours Sincerely,

As you might gather, I wasn't too impressed. Its got better though. At 16.30 the same day I get emailed a survey by them, asking for feedback about their service. Naturally, I was happy to share my experience with them and made full use of the 'Additional Comments' section to tell them what a shower they were. No reply.

On the day I sent them the above email, I received this:


Response Please note this is an automated acknowledgement.

Thank you for contacting lastminute.com. Your enquiry has been passed to our Customer Care Team who will strive to respond to your contact within 12 working hours.

Regards,

lastminute.com Customer Care
https://www.lastminute.com

Obviously, I was expecting this type of thing, so awaited with relish their reply. Which didn't actually come 12 hours later, or even 24 hours later. In fact I had to wait almost 52 hours for a response. When it came it was thus:

Telephone Call [Incident: 110121-003490]
...
From:holiday autos Sales <uksales@holidayautos.co.uk>
...
Add to ContactsTo:
Cc:XXXX.XXXXX@yahoo.co.uk
#cg_msg_content td.header { }#cg_msg_content td.text { padding-left: 4px; padding-right: 4px; }#cg_msg_content td.label { }#cg_msg_content td.data { }

Subject Telephone Call Response (Shikha Rani)28/01/2011 02.16 PM Dear Mr. XXXXX,

Order Reference: 103908696.

Thank you for your email.

I apologise for the delayed response.

Please be informed that I have forwarded your matter to complaint department for investigation. Therefore, please allow them to get back to you within next 28 days.

Your patience with regard to this matter is appreciated.

Kind regards,

Shikha Rani
Customer Services Team
lastminute.com Customer (XXXX XXXXX)21/01/2011 11.29 AM Telephone call received













The more observant amongst you might notice that the email pertains to some kind of car rental, and is not even the same incident number as that originally given.

So, I rest my case and assure anyone from Last-Minute.Com management who might eventually read this that you are indeed 'Last-Option.Com' as far as I am concerned in the future. Utter shambles.

Bish

bishop_stoke

Just a quick update on Last-minute and their excellent customer service: I have had no further contact from them, no response at all from them regarding my complaints.

Time to email them a link to this posting and see what happens then.