It is not a news that the customer service that all the Middle Eastern airlines Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways “provide” is appalling. I have covered these here in LoyaltyLobby number of times.
A LoyaltyLobby reader just sent me an email how he was able to resolve the Etihad Guest Gold status match from the February campaign (read more here and here) after emailing back and forth with the customer service for weeks.
You can access Etihad’s web page for Guest status levels here.
Here’s copy of the email that I received from the reader:
Following your item regards Etihad matching Gold Status, I emailed Etihad all the right details as required in February.
The last 2 months I have been fobbed off by poor Customer Service.
At 1000hrs yesterday I sent the email trail to customer services, copying in Etihad’s CEO (jhogan@etihad.ae), and received a call from Etihad Customer Services within 20 minutes making huge apologies. I received my membership via email within another 30 minutes.
It may be worth sharing this as Etihad Customer Services is appalling.
Conclusion
Why these airlines don’t get it that they will eventually lose customers and money by not providing good customer service? Cutting corners on customer service is very shortsighted.
If you are offering a status match campaign to poach frequent fliers, wouldn’t you think that it would be on their best interest to provide the absolute best service?
It shouldn’t require CC the CEO or complain to the DOT to get issues resolved, but unfortunately that is often the case nowadays.