Sharing my experience Lufthansa / Singapore : letter

the_edventure

After an awful experience with a flight from France to Singapore via Frankfurt, and terrible customer service, I tried communicating with the two responsible airlines (Lufthansa and Singapore), but the only response i got what full of lies and a compensation total of around €50! Here below is my final letter recently sent, with, as yet, no response... i would appreciate your feedback on what to do:
-
Dear "Customer Services Officer" (I'm sad to see that you don't have the politeness to let me know your name)

I was extremely disappointed and angry - after having waited 7 months to get a final answer from you - to receive such a rude, falsifying, impersonal, and unsympathetic letter from such a large organisation as yourselves. You have crossed a line by giving me false information, and that is why this e-mail is being copied to the main British papers, plus all of the relevant authorities. Airlines seem to be able to fob passengers off when things get tough, and I will not let that happen this time.

1. FALSIFICATION : Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa have and are lying (in my opinion, knowingly) about various things: I shall list them and can provide evidence:
1.1 "Unfortunately all hotels in the local area were fully booked following the Airport closure." - I have sent messages to all of the hotels within an approximate 15min taxi journey (I think we can agree that qualifies for 'local area'), and guess what? About 30% of them had vacancies. In my opinion, your staff on the ground were knowingly lying to avoid having to pay all the passangers' hotel bills, and in the e-mails I have received back from you, Lufthansa you too are lying knowingly. I look forward to hearing your reasons for supplying information that I can prove to be false. I hereby list all the hotels that had rooms available on the night in question. I have e-mails written to prove this data;
- Villa Kennedy
- Frankfurt Leonardo
- Frankfurt Town Centre Leonardo
- ACHAT Comfort Hotel Airport-Frankfurt
1.2 "We have checked with Lufthansa and they mentioned that there will be no compensation for your case. For further details, we would appreciate it if you could contact Lufthansa directly" - guess what? I have contacted Lufthansa and they DID offer me some compensation, and I quote: "As a goodwill gesture; we would like to offer you an online gift voucher for Eur 50". Possible describing 50 euro as 'compensation' might get me into trouble with the writers of the Oxford English Dictionary... i don't know.

2.
PASSING THE BUCK : Both Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines have pushed reponsibility to the other.
2.1 Singapore writing in an e-mail that "The general guidelines in the airlines industry is that the airline who handles the passenger is responsible for the passage and connection to the next airline"
2.2 I was told on the phone by representatives from Lufthansa, that to take this matter any further would involve speaking to Singapore Airlines, who were responsible in global terms for the booking.

I'm not sure from any of the responses whether anyone from the two airlines actually understands what an awful ordeal it was for the passengers on the trip. Can you imagine being a single mother and having three kids (two of whom, vomited on the flight), and having ZERO help from the Lufthansa staff? Do you understand how difficult it is to sleep in an airport? Do you have experience of trying to get a young baby to sleep in a fully lit airport?

I presume that you can see from this e-mail that this is not the end of this matter. I shall be pursuing this as far as it goes until both Lufthansa and SA understand their responsibilities. I have much better things to do than this, but if people like me don't make a point from time to time, it seems that airlines will walk all over their passengers without thought.

Below I attach all of the e-mails sent and received regarding this matter:

Regards,
Ed Hoskin
cc:
The Prime Minister of Great Britain, 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA
BBC Watchdog, Trip Advisor, The AUC, The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent
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Does anyone else have a similar experience, or think what i can do next, because in my opinion they have lied knowingly to a while plane of people.
Cheers, Ed Hoskin

malkie76

It's too long, and too rude/aggressive/sarcastic. It will get binned in any customer relations department. I realise you feel you've been treated poorly, but you need to be short, clear and explain what you want.

I've no idea what went wrong, or what you actually want.

It sounds like you were delayed but no accommodation was offered? If there were rooms then why didn't you get one then send the bill to the airline ?

dmg24

the_edventure wrote: »

cc:
The Prime Minister of Great Britain, 10 Downing Street, London, SW1A 2AA
BBC

I am guessing your next response will be something along the lines of:

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

bagand96

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I gather this is cutting the long story short:

- You booked flights Marseilles-Singapore via Frankfurt with Lufthansa
- Your MRS-FRA flight was diverted due poor weather, meaning you missed your connection FRA-SIN
- On arrival at FRA you had to spend the night at the airport until you could catch the next available flight to SIN. No accommodation was supplied by Lufthansa.


In situations like this the airlines do have a responsibility towards you. The EU regulations on passenger rights are EU 261/2004. The airline is responsible for "assistance", which in this case is meals and refreshments, as well as accommodation if an overnight stay is necessary. You are not due any compensation though, because the cause of the problems were genuinely beyond the airlines control.

Basically it seems that other than general lack of information, Lufthansa have failed to provide you with the overnight accommodation you were entitled to. This is your only real angle with them. It is worth noting that you would have been well within your rights to source your own hotel and claim the cost from the airline afterwards (a lot of airlines, even low cost ones will do this).

I am not sure where you can go from here. You need to decide what you actually want from them. You should have had a hotel room and didn't get one, what do you want them to do to make up for this? To my knowledge the EU regs do not make any provision for claims against assistance that wasn't provided. You may have a case to complain to the regulator that assistance due wasn't offered, but I don't know if that would actually get you anything.

Finally, this was a flight from France to Singapore on a German airline. I have no idea why the British PM, the UK AUC, or any British newspaper would have any interest in it whatsoever.

cactusdust

Unless you have used that code, take it out of your post before someone uses it. It may be linked to your name.. but its not something you want to post on the public domain!

malkie76

Your original letters were still too long, and still don't explain what you want.
You complain that you weren't offered accomodation, but in a later post you say you didn't want it???

If your delay was 12hours, and you received food and drinks vouchers then I think the airline has done ok.

Caz3121

I agree you are not being clear at what you are trying to achieve here. Weather is completely out of the airlines control and, apart from the hotel which you could have arranged yourself and reclaimed, they seem to have done what they should/could have.

I can understand the frustration of delays and how you feel it has been dealt with but what out of pocket expenses are you trying to be reimbursed for?

What have your travel insurance said about the situation?

dmg24

Caz3121 wrote: »

I agree you are not being clear at what you are trying to achieve here. Weather is completely out of the airlines control and, apart from the hotel which you could have arranged yourself and reclaimed, they seem to have done what they should/could have.

I can understand the frustration of delays and how you feel it has been dealt with but what out of pocket expenses are you trying to be reimbursed for?

What have your travel insurance said about the situation?

Who cares about the travel insurance, I want to know what David Cameron thinks!

malkie76

Having reread your letter you asked for 'some sort of compensation', which you received in the form of an online voucher.
You've received everything you asked for! Very generous given the weather was outside the control of the airline!

Incapuppy

dmg24 wrote: »

Who cares about the travel insurance, I want to know what David Cameron thinks!

Can you send some Tena Lady my way please? :rotfl:

bcl999

dmg24 wrote: »

Who cares about the travel insurance, I want to know what David Cameron thinks!

Dave thinks the OP should have used Ryanair.