Customer Loyalty

I was coming back from Mumbai via Indian Airlines (now known as Air India). As you would have it, the flight was delayed by 90 minutes … the passengers were sitting in the flight without the airplane moving a single inch. Finally, when the flight reached Hyderabad, I took a cab to office, half the day was wasted … hrrrumph!!

On my way to the office, I receive a call from an Air India representative, saying that 4 air miles have been accrued to my account and I can check those at so and so url, all I need to do is keep my boarding passes with me. Just how idiotic is this … for travelling 1600 miles, I get 4 air miles … so after 400 trips with Air India, I will finally get one flight free of cost. That’s a discount of 0.25%

If only they can take that discount and use the savings to bolster their infrastructure and setup so that such flight delays do not occur. I would rather pay that discount instead of waiting those additional 90 minutes. Does the marketing department of Air India have a warped definition of customer loyalty?

5 thoughts on “Customer Loyalty”

  1. thts quite an tempting offer from indian airlines…probably even 100 air miles might get you a hotel voucher or something…if the miles can be redeemed only on air tickets, i agree with you….and god knows, when would IA pull up their socks and start competing with private players on customer service

  2. But the question is: even how many private players are good on customer service? I can think of just two, and only their “full-price” offerings are good enough.

  3. Frankly, I cant think of any at the moment. No one is perfect … most of the airlines have bombed out sometime or the other!

  4. Although I get the gist of what you are trying to say, aren’t you stretching the round trip mileage between Hyderabad and Mumbai? :)
    The straight line distance between them being less than 400 miles. :D

    And to repeat myself from orkut – PICS!!!!!!!!!!!

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