Sybreon Ones Nought

You do realise that people can detect when something is not quite right. I’ll reproduce KLM’s official email reply to me after I lodged a customer complaint. I wonder if they had even bothered to even check the issue.

Claim No6117022001 KL811 / 31DEC2012

Dear Mr. Shawn,

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to detail your experiences to us.

Passengers are offered a wide variety of fares and each fare has restrictions associated with it depending on the actual amount paid. Before buying a ticket online, passengers need to verify the terms and conditions of ticket about to purchase to make sure it meets your requirements.

As the ticket flexibility changes according to the fare, after you have completed the purchase a change of program is not always possible. A change of booking or of itinerary might require a penalty payment and, in the event of cancellation, not all fares are refundable. Changes to different names are not permitted.

However, an immediate name change is required under such circumstances and you are liable for paying standard change fees as stipulated by the purchased fare rules.

Please find the details below
How can I change the name on my ticket?
If your name or other personal details in your booking have been misspelt, please contact the KLM Service Centre. You may need to pay a fee to change your name.
If part of your journey will be with a partner airline of KLM, it may not be possible to change your name.
You can always view your booking details by logging in to Manage my Booking.
We note that you wish to add a second middle name, Tan/ Shawn Ser Ngiap, instead of Tan/Shawn. In this case, as advised by our reservation agent, the name change fee applies.

While we understand your disappointment over this matter, the name change fee in question is a valid fee for the change that you requested. We are sorry for any disappointment that this has caused.

We do hope that despite the disappointment, the above explanation will help soften the negative impact of this situation.

Best regards,
Jessie Y.
Asia Pacific Customer Care

Should you wish to reply to this e-mail, or check the status of your request, please use the following link to send us your message: click here

Noticed anything odd?

What circumstances do they mean, in the third paragraph? There’s a disconnect between that paragraph and the others. This typically indicates that the reply was probably edited out. There might have been a paragraph before that, which talks about such circumstance. Whatever the circumstance was, I have no idea what they mean.

Also, they actually failed to deal with the fact that I had contacted them and requested for a name change within 24-hours, which according to their earlier customer service, meant that I did not have to pay for a name change, which was the reason why they had to raise my issue up in the first place. This was what was asked of me and printed on the ticket – to inform them within 24-hours. Nobody seems to be able to give me a straight-forward reply on this. Just go on record to tell me that there is no such thing and that I had imagined it all and I’ll go away.

And the final straw is that the reply link doesn’t even work as  I get a 404 error with a nice picture of a sakura-like flower when I click on in. When I checked the URL, it was a straight-forward anchor href with a base64 encocded string at the end. When I contacted KLM on twitter about it, their reply was this:

@sybreon We regret to hear this, Shawn. Have you tried the link in a different browser?

I feel like responding to them with a tweet of “did you try it with a browser on your end? did it work?” Seriously, their customer service is the shit.

Instead of softening the negative impact of the situation, I’m sorry but the email reply has actually worsened it. It leaves my main question unanswered, and it raises new suspicious ‘circumstances’. Furthermore, the reply link doesn’t work and I cannot reply to the email to follow up on the matter.

So, like I mentioned earlier, my current experience with KLM is turning out to be a nightmare. I will never fly with them again for the rest of my life.

KLM – you suck, hard.

I have tickets to Berlin from KLM. The name on the tickets are “Shawn Tan” as per first name, last name proper. However, the name in my passport is my full name – typical Malaysian Chinese name with the extra bits at the end.

Their terms state that: “If your name or other personal details have been misspelt, please contact us within 24 hours of booking”, which I did. I used their own website system to contact them about 21 hours later. I have copies of the email acknowledgement with the date/time stamps of course.

In the email (KMM24923872V73688L0KM), I explained to them that the name on the tickets are my first name and last name; and also gave them my full passport name. I asked them if it would cause any problems and instructed them to make the necessary changes if it might.

However, they only responded to me almost a week later to ask me to call up their local office, which I promptly did on receiving the response. My call was handled and I was told that I would need to pay a RM150 name-change fee.

I check with their staff that the conditions are that within 24 hours it was not necessary. Their staff asked me if I had contacted them within 24 hours and I said that I did email them. So, they investigated the email and told me that they would have to raise the issue up and contact me back later.

Their staff called me up the next day to tell me that after raising the issue to KLM Malaysia‘s office, the decision was that I still had to pay the RM150 name-change fee.

I’m sorely pissed as I had done everything according to the terms and conditions, and using their own online systems. It is not my fault if they responded to it nearly a week later. I don’t understand why I’m still being made to pay the name-change fee. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not my fault!

Their staff who called me back did not have a reason to give me either except to insist that I had to either pay the name-change fee or not change my name. She did originally highlight to me the risk of not putting in my full name is that I might face immigration problems.

KLM, it is not a good idea to cast fear and uncertainty in your customers. Now, I’m pissed and feel like they’re screwing me over and then causing me worry that I might be kicked out by immigration. All in all, this was a bad customer experience for me with KLM.

This is actually the first time that I’m flying KLM and it will definitely be my last!