In reality, there is no such thing as a “pure business transaction” People – somehow, some way, are involved in even the simplest transaction.

There’s doing things right (AA and other company “protect us from the customers”) and then there’s doing the right thing.

As for the $359 – the whole pricing scheme is an artificial construct – so they aren’t actually “shelling out” anything. They set the price and they can choose to sell the seat, let it go empty, or use it for special consideration of a customer.

AA valued my measly $50 luggage fee more than they did my business – so I will not be flying with them again unless absolutely forced to . So, let’s see $50 plus $359 – versus say just one roundtrip ticket Chicago/NYC of $550.00. Hmmm…too bad they can’t do math.

As for sick dogs, certainly that’s a great opportunity to show some care. Anyone see how Zappos responded to a woman’s Mom dieing? Now, that’s doing the right thing.

In reality, there is no such thing as a “pure business transaction” People – somehow, some way, are involved in even the simplest transaction.

There’s doing things right (AA and other company “protect us from the customers”) and then there’s doing the right thing.

As for the $359 – the whole pricing scheme is an artificial construct – so they aren’t actually “shelling out” anything. They set the price and they can choose to sell the seat, let it go empty, or use it for special consideration of a customer.

AA valued my measly $50 luggage fee more than they did my business – so I will not be flying with them again unless absolutely forced to . So, let’s see $50 plus $359 – versus say just one roundtrip ticket Chicago/NYC of $550.00. Hmmm…too bad they can’t do math.

As for sick dogs, certainly that’s a great opportunity to show some care. Anyone see how Zappos responded to a woman’s Mom dieing? Now, that’s doing the right thing.

My condolences on your grandmother’s passing and cheers to your consideration of her wishes and removing the photo lest you be smacked upside the head. Sounds like she and my grandmother went to the same grandmothering school.

On that note, I was speaking to my 83 yo grandmother today and let her know that I’d be making airline reservations this weekend for my family of four (Memphis to Phoenix and we might be able to meet her there). Anyhow, resultant of how they treated you, my reservations will not be with them. I’ll be sure to follow up with whoever we go with. It won’t be American Airlines, or is it AA.
Dugg and Stumbled (via @CBrogan ’s tweet).

(Sorry about your grandmother).

I’d be the first one to validate your dissappointment with AA, and I totally support your efforts to disengage from them in response to their cold response to a loyal customer in need. Still, I can’t help but feel compelled to make two points, not so much in AA’s defense but to flesh out what’s happening here.

1) From a pure business point of view, I don’t think you’re correct to characterize their “fare difference” as a “variable pricing scheme” that is merely there to get you to pay more for the exact same thing. From their point of view, the seat you wanted to change to was more expensive because if you didn’t take it, they expected somebody else to pay them the extra $359 for it (plus whatever your original fare for the segment was). You note that they would only *potentially* be getting this extra money, but given how many flights leave the gates totally full nowadays, it is quite possible that giving you that seat would have actually caused them to leave someone else behind, and forego the extra $359 in real cash revenue that they otherwise would have received. In fact, given the airlines’ bizarre pricing schemes, that other person would probably have been charged even more than the total of your original ticket plus $359 for their last minute “walk-up” reservation, and there are people (mainly biz travellers) who are actually willing to pay that. Still, we’ll stick with just the $359, but I think it’s only fair to recognize that this is likely real, not just potential, money to AA.

So therefore, what you are really saying is that if AA were a more customer-oriented airline, they would have recognized this as an opportunity to spend $359 (at least) to reward the loyalty of your half million miles and many tens of thousands of dollars of business. I personally think they should have done this–you are a good person and a great and loyal customer. But let’s be fair–$359 isn’t chump change, and it’s not unreasonable that they would take pause before handing it out. After all, they did already wave their $100 change fee, which clearly was an amount that they *were* willing to pay to reward your loyalty. So, my point is that for AA, this may be less a question of whether you are worthy of being rewarded than of how much they can justify paying to do so. If they did agree to $359, should they have still agreed if the amount were $1,000? More? Is it not reasonable for them to put a limit on what they’ll invest to maintain your loyalty?

2) Let’s not forget the overall context that this sad response from AA occurred within. The airlines are waging all-out war on their customers because they feel that their customers have taken advantage of every one of their weaknesses to suck the life out of them. Jake, you are very much the exception as a customer who has repeatedly chosen to pay more to retain his loyalty to his airline when other options are cheaper. Most fliers nowadays scrutinize the web to find the absolute lowest fare for a trip, and will change airlines and accept weird routings just to save $10. (In fact, I think the web detrimentally entices people to act out irrationally compulsive behaviors when planning a trip, but that’s a different discussion….). When the airlines are being hammered by high fuel prices and numbing financial losses and try to raise their fares by $15/ticket, just one of their competitors will keep the original (money-losing) price, the business will all shift to them, and all the others have to rescind their increases just to keep butts in their seats. So, after years of feeling that their customers don’t give two hoots about which airline they fly on as long as they get the absolute lowest price offered by anybody, the airlines finally decided to push back. They’ve concluded that there’s no margin in trying to be seen as being better than the next guy, they only want to fill as many planes as they can given that at the fare levels they’ve been forced to accept, their only shot at making any money is to fly totally full. The more money they spend on providing “amenities” (such as peanuts, pillows, and fare accomodations to the bereaved), the more seats they need to fill to breakeven. We’d like to argue that if they provided better service they’d fill more seats, but sadly, their experience tells them otherwise.

As perhaps you can tell, I’m ambivalent about this circumstance. I’m no friend of the airlines–I think their behavior is often wretched (such as what happened to you), and the industry has a sad history of screwing everybody who touches it (including its employees, customers, and investors). Still, the flying public is ruthless and unreasonable, and seems to believe that they are owed the right to fly anywhere they want for a fantasy fare that is well under both the airline’s cost of providing the service as well as any reasonable assessment of the value of the transportation service to the user. Frankly, I see this as the inevitable result of airline deregulation, which I always saw as a mistake, but we Americans love our unfettered free market, so this is where we are–a very sick domestic airline industry, and all-out war between it and its customers. In this light, AA’s response to you was not a mistake, and shouldn’t come as a surprise to us.

My condolences on the loss of your grandmother.

Steve Tulsky (linked via Doc Searls)

My condolences on your grandmother’s passing and cheers to your consideration of her wishes and removing the photo lest you be smacked upside the head. Sounds like she and my grandmother went to the same grandmothering school.

On that note, I was speaking to my 83 yo grandmother today and let her know that I’d be making airline reservations this weekend for my family of four (Memphis to Phoenix and we might be able to meet her there). Anyhow, resultant of how they treated you, my reservations will not be with them. I’ll be sure to follow up with whoever we go with. It won’t be American Airlines, or is it AA.
Dugg and Stumbled (via @CBrogan ’s tweet).

(Sorry about your grandmother).

I’d be the first one to validate your dissappointment with AA, and I totally support your efforts to disengage from them in response to their cold response to a loyal customer in need. Still, I can’t help but feel compelled to make two points, not so much in AA’s defense but to flesh out what’s happening here.

1) From a pure business point of view, I don’t think you’re correct to characterize their “fare difference” as a “variable pricing scheme” that is merely there to get you to pay more for the exact same thing. From their point of view, the seat you wanted to change to was more expensive because if you didn’t take it, they expected somebody else to pay them the extra $359 for it (plus whatever your original fare for the segment was). You note that they would only *potentially* be getting this extra money, but given how many flights leave the gates totally full nowadays, it is quite possible that giving you that seat would have actually caused them to leave someone else behind, and forego the extra $359 in real cash revenue that they otherwise would have received. In fact, given the airlines’ bizarre pricing schemes, that other person would probably have been charged even more than the total of your original ticket plus $359 for their last minute “walk-up” reservation, and there are people (mainly biz travellers) who are actually willing to pay that. Still, we’ll stick with just the $359, but I think it’s only fair to recognize that this is likely real, not just potential, money to AA.

So therefore, what you are really saying is that if AA were a more customer-oriented airline, they would have recognized this as an opportunity to spend $359 (at least) to reward the loyalty of your half million miles and many tens of thousands of dollars of business. I personally think they should have done this–you are a good person and a great and loyal customer. But let’s be fair–$359 isn’t chump change, and it’s not unreasonable that they would take pause before handing it out. After all, they did already wave their $100 change fee, which clearly was an amount that they *were* willing to pay to reward your loyalty. So, my point is that for AA, this may be less a question of whether you are worthy of being rewarded than of how much they can justify paying to do so. If they did agree to $359, should they have still agreed if the amount were $1,000? More? Is it not reasonable for them to put a limit on what they’ll invest to maintain your loyalty?

2) Let’s not forget the overall context that this sad response from AA occurred within. The airlines are waging all-out war on their customers because they feel that their customers have taken advantage of every one of their weaknesses to suck the life out of them. Jake, you are very much the exception as a customer who has repeatedly chosen to pay more to retain his loyalty to his airline when other options are cheaper. Most fliers nowadays scrutinize the web to find the absolute lowest fare for a trip, and will change airlines and accept weird routings just to save $10. (In fact, I think the web detrimentally entices people to act out irrationally compulsive behaviors when planning a trip, but that’s a different discussion….). When the airlines are being hammered by high fuel prices and numbing financial losses and try to raise their fares by $15/ticket, just one of their competitors will keep the original (money-losing) price, the business will all shift to them, and all the others have to rescind their increases just to keep butts in their seats. So, after years of feeling that their customers don’t give two hoots about which airline they fly on as long as they get the absolute lowest price offered by anybody, the airlines finally decided to push back. They’ve concluded that there’s no margin in trying to be seen as being better than the next guy, they only want to fill as many planes as they can given that at the fare levels they’ve been forced to accept, their only shot at making any money is to fly totally full. The more money they spend on providing “amenities” (such as peanuts, pillows, and fare accomodations to the bereaved), the more seats they need to fill to breakeven. We’d like to argue that if they provided better service they’d fill more seats, but sadly, their experience tells them otherwise.

As perhaps you can tell, I’m ambivalent about this circumstance. I’m no friend of the airlines–I think their behavior is often wretched (such as what happened to you), and the industry has a sad history of screwing everybody who touches it (including its employees, customers, and investors). Still, the flying public is ruthless and unreasonable, and seems to believe that they are owed the right to fly anywhere they want for a fantasy fare that is well under both the airline’s cost of providing the service as well as any reasonable assessment of the value of the transportation service to the user. Frankly, I see this as the inevitable result of airline deregulation, which I always saw as a mistake, but we Americans love our unfettered free market, so this is where we are–a very sick domestic airline industry, and all-out war between it and its customers. In this light, AA’s response to you was not a mistake, and shouldn’t come as a surprise to us.

My condolences on the loss of your grandmother.

Steve Tulsky (linked via Doc Searls)