4 ms·

Definitely going to have to strongly disagree. Having dealt with customer service from both airlines, Alaska is a massive upgrade in competence, friendliness, a

Definitely going to have to strongly disagree. Having dealt with customer service from both airlines, Alaska is a massive upgrade in competence, friendliness, and results. Alaska certainly isn't as fancy but I personally don't need the screens and check in experience. I actually find that Virgin's webapp for booking tickets to be incredibly buggy.

mjcl 10y ago
So, this is all ancedata, but my experiences with Alaska have been fantastically poor. The last time I flew AS, they lost my bag. No big deal, it happens. I was staying with a friend in his apartment. Late that evening after I had gone to sleep, I received a series of voicemails from the AS employee trying to deliver my bag, but couldn't get into the building. The first few voicemails were rude, the last was vulgar. The employee ended up leaving my bag ON THEIR BACK PORCH and instructed me to go get it. To top the experience off, she left some sort of receipt on top of the bag, which I took and threw away. I later received another call from her berating me for taking the receipt, without which she apparently would not receive payment for delivering the bag. For the return flight, I did arrive 5 minutes too late to check a bag by the rules. Instead of telling me this or giving me a chance to carry on my small bag (easily fits in the sizer), the check-in agent moved me to standby on the next & last SJC flight of the day, told me I wasn't likely to make that flight, and called for the next person in line. I went online with my laptop and found they were still selling one-way F tickets for that last flight for $250, so I bought one and ended up making it home that night, no thanks to the check-in agent. Now, I will grant that at the time (~2005) I wasn't a super-experienced flyer, and there were tons of points I should have pushed back or complained, but their service was just plain awful. I've had a bunch of bad experiences with AS, but the above was the last straw. After that I booked Southwest/Virgin and just worked around their limited schedule for SJC/SFO-SEA. Contrast this with VX, where I accidentally purchased a ticket for a flight the day before I intended to travel. I realized my mistake when I received a marketing "thanks for flying with us" e-mail. I called and explained that it was entirely my fault, and was allowed to rebook for the next day and they refunded the original ticket, minus the change fee. I had no status with VX, they had every right to take the entire ticket value and they still were incredibly generous.
- maherbeg 10y ago
  That sounds awful. I'm fairly certain, Alaska and all other airlines use a 3rd party service to handle retrieving lost luggage. Having dealt with that myself on other airlines, it's a miserable experience all around with nobody knowing the complete picture. That said, it's no excuse for the airlines to just accept bad behavior by their 3rd parties.
  - mjcl 10y ago
    I can't speak to what they do now, but back then pretty much any airport worker was apparently allowed to 'bid' on a bag return job for AS. In this case, it was an actual AS employee that took the job. That's what I learned from that receipt nonsense.

mjcl 10y ago

So, this is all ancedata, but my experiences with Alaska have been fantastically poor. The last time I flew AS, they lost my bag. No big deal, it happens. I was staying with a friend in his apartment. Late that evening after I had gone to sleep, I received a series of voicemails from the AS employee trying to deliver my bag, but couldn't get into the building. The first few voicemails were rude, the last was vulgar. The employee ended up leaving my bag ON THEIR BACK PORCH and instructed me to go get it. To top the experience off, she left some sort of receipt on top of the bag, which I took and threw away. I later received another call from her berating me for taking the receipt, without which she apparently would not receive payment for delivering the bag. For the return flight, I did arrive 5 minutes too late to check a bag by the rules. Instead of telling me this or giving me a chance to carry on my small bag (easily fits in the sizer), the check-in agent moved me to standby on the next & last SJC flight of the day, told me I wasn't likely to make that flight, and called for the next person in line. I went online with my laptop and found they were still selling one-way F tickets for that last flight for $250, so I bought one and ended up making it home that night, no thanks to the check-in agent. Now, I will grant that at the time (~2005) I wasn't a super-experienced flyer, and there were tons of points I should have pushed back or complained, but their service was just plain awful. I've had a bunch of bad experiences with AS, but the above was the last straw. After that I booked Southwest/Virgin and just worked around their limited schedule for SJC/SFO-SEA. Contrast this with VX, where I accidentally purchased a ticket for a flight the day before I intended to travel. I realized my mistake when I received a marketing "thanks for flying with us" e-mail. I called and explained that it was entirely my fault, and was allowed to rebook for the next day and they refunded the original ticket, minus the change fee. I had no status with VX, they had every right to take the entire ticket value and they still were incredibly generous.

maherbeg 10y ago
That sounds awful. I'm fairly certain, Alaska and all other airlines use a 3rd party service to handle retrieving lost luggage. Having dealt with that myself on other airlines, it's a miserable experience all around with nobody knowing the complete picture. That said, it's no excuse for the airlines to just accept bad behavior by their 3rd parties.
- mjcl 10y ago
  I can't speak to what they do now, but back then pretty much any airport worker was apparently allowed to 'bid' on a bag return job for AS. In this case, it was an actual AS employee that took the job. That's what I learned from that receipt nonsense.