JetBlue's "Customer Service" These Days...

This past Christmas we took a trip with my family on a Caribbean cruise. As usual, we flew on JetBlue Airways both to and from our cruise, which departed from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The flights to Puerto Rico were great, and we enjoyed the extra legroom and comfortable experience that is the reason we choose to fly JetBlue whenever it isn't prohibitively more expensive than other airlines. The cruise was fantastic, and it was a great vacation. And then there were the return flights.

We got to the airport very early, as we always do when traveling with my mom. After waiting quite a while we started to hear that our flight was going to be delayed. Being a connecting flight, this made us nervous, so we checked our options with the ticket counter several times. We had arrived so early that we could not yet check our baggage in for the flight and go sit at the gate, so we continued to wait near the ticket counter, checking occasionally on our flight status.

After a couple of hours it became apparent that this delay, which we learned was caused by a JetBlue employee (a pilot, I believe) not coming to work that day, was going to result in missing our connecting flight from JFK airport in NYC to Salt Lake City. So we started working with the people at the ticket counter to get ourselves accommodated on flights that would be able to get us home. We were told that we would likely be waiting as long as 2-3 days, either in Puerto Rico or, if we chose to fly to JFK, in NYC. They continued to talk to people on the phone and work on accommodation that would get us home without spending several extra days away from home, and eventually got us onto a flight with a chance of making a connection in JFK onto a flight to Las Vegas (we had to run across the large JetBlue terminal in JFK in order to make the connection, only to be delayed once onboard the aircraft). After spending the night inside the airport at Las Vegas, sleeping on the floor of a very cold, and very empty, airport terminal, we boarded our flight (once again delayed by the same crew issues that began the day before) to Long Beach, CA, and then finally onto a flight back to Salt Lake City, UT. We finally arrived home about 28 miserable hours later than planned.

For all of this trouble JetBlue issued us $100 vouchers, which are basically only useful as a coupon for an upcoming flight they want us to book. Also, all of the rearranging they had done on our return flights separated the reservations from our original reservation, so when I requested the TrueBlue points (JetBlue's frequent flyer program) for that reservation it failed to also give me points on the return flights.

Fast forward to July, when Tiffany and I decide we want to take one last trip this summer, before she starts school again, and before she is unable to fly in the third trimester of her pregnancy. So we book flights to NYC to spend a week seeing Broadway shows and eating good food. I remember that we have vouchers, so I look into using them to upgrade our seats for extra legroom. In doing so I see that I didn't ever get my TrueBlue points for our return flights on our Christmas trip, and I am unable to log into their voucher/credit system online, so I write an email (having worked for JetBlue myself, responding to these emails, and hating to talk on the phone, this seemed like the best way to deal with these problems).

I get a response the next day from JetBlue (a crewmember in TrueBlue named Diane), which I recognize from my experience at JetBlue as a lazy, canned response that took no effort or time at all, and which helped me in no way whatsoever. So I responded with an email stating my disappointment, and then wrote in to JetBlue again to complain about that crewmember's response and JetBlue's disappointing lack of customer service. Anyway, that was this morning, and I will have to update this post when a response to my email comes.

The point I want to make in this blog entry, should anyone actually read it, is that JetBlue is not the airline it once was. They still have the same great aircraft, and the comfortable seats, decent snacks, and the TV's at every seat, and that is why we still love to fly JetBlue whenever possible. But the focus on caring about the customers that once set them apart from the rest of the callous travel industry is gone. It started to disappear years ago as Dave Barger edged David Neeleman out of the picture with his focus on "Returning To Profitability", which resulted in Neeleman's eventual exit from the company altogether. And Mr. Barger has continued to run the company further and further from the principles that made JetBlue great in the first place.

Gone are the days when JetBlue's management supported crewmembers going the extra mile to ensure that customers had a good experience, even when their flights may not have gone as planned. Gone are the days of JetBlue's Reservations crewmembers taking the time to make sure that every phone call left a good taste in every caller's mouth. Now they are pushed to be efficient, and to sell extra crap to everyone they talk to, while keeping calls short. The crewmembers who respond to emails sent through JetBlue's website no longer take the time to understand and resolve customers' issues. Again, they are pushed to be fast, resulting in the use of "canned" verbiage that states rules and regulations, rather than doing anything to help people with their problems (even when JetBlue caused the problems in the first place!).

It is a real shame. JetBlue used to be something really special. Now... not so much.