Aer Lingus concedes good service has 'taken flight'
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Tuesday March 21 2006
Personal Finance Editor
AER Lingus admits its handling of customer complaints has been poor.
And now the airline, which made this admission yesterday, is putting together a taskforce to improve its customer service.
Frustrated customers, unable to get a response from the airline, have turned to the Director of Consumer Affairs.
But the State consumer watchdog was itself unable to get a response from the airline, and was forced to send its inspectors to Dublin Airport a number of times in 2005 and again this year.
A spokesman for the watchdog said yesterday its inspectors took the unusual step of calling in person to the Aer Lingus head office because of repeated failures by the airline to respond to them.
The Consumers Affairs staff had been unable to get a response on behalf of disgruntled customers by phone, letter or e-mail.
"Aer Lingus communications with us were unsatisfactory.
"We would not normally go out to visit a company, but we were unable to get a reply," the spokesman said.
The national airline had scaled back its customer complaints section over the past few years, as it moved to turn itself into a low-cost carrier.
But the airline admitted yesterday it is now attempting to bolster its customer complaints department. It said a taskforce had been put together to review ways of improving their service.
A spokeswoman said staff from the Director of Consumer Affairs office had called to Aer Lingus headquarters up to three times at the end of last year and twice this year.
"This matter arose because of a backlog in handling customer queries in Aer Lingus at the moment," he said.
"We have added extra personnel due to the extent of the queries and we have put together a taskforce to deal with it.
"We aim to speed up how we deal with queries, because we do recognise it is an issue and we want to have it sorted out by the summer."
Complaints about everything from missing bags to charges have not been dealt with for weeks on end.
