The trouble with a no frills airline is that you tend to get no frills exchanges when dealing with their staff.
After being told the wrong delay time, my plane took off without me or my colleague on it, when we took this up with Easy Jet ground staff at Luton, we found out that his luggage had been flown to Edinburgh and mine had been hauled off, ripped and placed in a cupboard somewhere. We also had to pay £25 each for another flight.

This is an extract of a letter I wrote to them, sending copies to the Civil Aviation Authority:

I have enclosed some useful suggestions for the Luton customer services should an event like this occur again, and I have no doubt that it will.

· Advise all passengers to be in the departure lounge half an hour before take off. And to check screens as delay times can dramatically change.
· If delay times change, announce the new time over the tannoy.
· Announce the names of the missing passengers over a tannoy in all parts of the airport.
· Removing the luggage (all of it) and offer to check this in (undamaged) for the next flight, without making the passenger stand in line again.
· Offering the use of a telephone to contact those who may be affected by the delay as many of Luton’s payphones do not work
· Assigning one agent or supervisor to deal with each case, so that no time is wasted retelling the story.
· Consider the merits of each case before charging additional costs.
· Do not advise passengers to take matters up with EasyJet staff in the destination airport when there is no EasyJet staff at the destination airport.

It seems very unusual for a commercial airline to transfer a suitcase without the passenger who checked the suitcase in on a national flight from one end of the country to the other. Whilst most of London was on bomb alert after the terrorist incident in Ealing, EasyJet are most relaxed when it comes to anonymous baggage transfer. This is very unsettling.

Both my colleague and I find it very unusual to encounter a company with a customer service department that is so notably stubborn.

Yours, etc.....

BASTARDS

ya pays yer money, ya gets yer service

if you want the special treatment, pay for it, fly BA or one of the other mainstream airlines
if you want to fly cheaply, get there on time, get to your gate on time

ryanair are even worse if something goes wrong (but more of their flights are on time)

They don't call it no-frills for nothing you know!

Yeah, I know, I know, but still, the real issue was common courtesy, surely that's not something that you have to pay £100 extra for. I mean, I'll do without airline meals, a newspaper to read, I'll even do without the greeters at the plane door who flash you a smile, but when things go tits up, let's break it down:

Cost of not getting your luggage ripped to shreds by a doberman luggage handler: £25
Cost of getting an announcement in the airport to say that you are about to miss your flight: £25
Cost of a "sorry": £5
Cost of use of a phone: £20
Cost of not having to pay to transfer to another flight: £25

British Airways - pricey but probably worth it.

I used to use EasyJet a hell of a lot both for personal and business use. At least one trip abroad each week.
I wanted to give my parents-in-law an anniversary gift, so I bought some air tickets from Easyjet for them to visit family living abroad, that they hadn’t seen for some time and booked them into a local hotel. To keep costs down I booked months in advance.
Unfortunately shortly before they were due to go, my Mother-in Law passed away unexpectedly. We were going to cancel the trip, but in fact persuaded my father-in law that he should still go and his sister agreed to go with him.
I contacted Easyjet to explain what had happened and to change the name on one ticket.
They insisted I had to pay an admin cost PLUS the difference in price between what I paid and the current cost of the same ticket – something close to £200.
They insisted on communicating only by e-mail and all I ever got were standard template e-mails referring me to their “conditions of sale”.
Even when I did eventually get a voice on the phone they would only repeat standard company policy. No extenuating circumstances could be considered and No I could not be connected to someone more senior.
This is a company that fails completely to understand that customer service is a basic business requirement and not a “frill”.

well, to be fair, easyjets change-of-details policy is there to prevent people simply booking up loads of cheap flights early with a random names and then changing them later when they know who really is travelling (cos that's what i would do for company use) People will always bring up tales of bereavements to try and get special treatment, unfortunately, as in your case, not all of these tales are made up

getting an announcement? will passenger magicguppy please put down his pint and get a move on, we are waiting for him
gate delays cost lots of money, that cost has to be passed on to the customers. why should i pay for you to sit in the bar?

btw baggage throwers, sorry 'handlers' are usually employed by the airport, not by the airline

Who's side are you on?

Just kidding, it's the cost that I was thinking about, if baggage handlers are employed by the airport, it probably costs extra for the airline to get them to physically remove baggage from a flight that passengers are not aboard. A cost far higher than an anouncement. And granted, you got me there, I was drinking a pint, trying to take up the time that I'd been told to wait.

As for leaving one bag on, that's just scary.

Don't side with the rich greek guy, side with me, I'm a humble dogbomber.

it does, SO GET THERE IN TIME! like i said, that cost goes back into ticket prices
i'm sick of sitting on a packed smelly plane waiting for 'quick pint chancers' to get on

you are told when you check in to be there 40 mins before it's due to leave i believe

I can understand their policy Hugo. But a quick check on their computer would have told them that I had traveled with them over a hundred times in the past few years and never tried for a change of name before.
As for Guppy's comment about the rich Greek guy, its a shame he is no longer involved in a major way. I remember when he used to get on flights from Luton if they were seriously delayed in order to explain the reason and apologise to the passengers! Its a shame that a company can't remember what made it successful in the first place when it gets bigger.

hugo-a-gogo spouted:
it does, SO GET THERE IN TIME! like i said, that cost goes back into ticket prices
i'm sick of sitting on a packed smelly plane waiting for 'quick pint chancers' to get on

you are told when you check in to be there 40 mins before it's due to leave i believe

The whole point is that I was there 40 minutes before it was due to leave, or at least 40 minutes before I was told it would leave.
The only solution to prevent guys like you from having to wait for chancers like me is to take off without us, leaving our luggage on board, since that is an unfeasable security concern, I'd ask, what is cheaper and faster - finding and removing the luggage or making an announcement to the "Chancer Bar" area?

I would never use this airline, you only have to see how they operate on that Airline programme.
Customer service is non existant.

I have a theory about companies like Easyjet and Ryanair- they do lots of low cost one way tickets- I think that they are actually sponsored by the government with the idea that if they send enough people abroad on one way tickets they'll just decide to stay there, thus creating British 'holiday maker' colonies all over the planet- "Easyinvasion"

Lil' al spouted:
if they send enough people abroad on one way tickets they'll just decide to stay there, thus creating British 'holiday maker' colonies all over the planet- "Easyinvasion"

Spain is one such colony

As is France- we never gave up on that one- heh heh heh.

I flew with easy jet last year and never will again. The annoying fact is, I don't think I got the flight much cheaper than if I'd flown with another airline. It was horrible. I didn't realise you don't get allocated your seat at check in - so when it comes to boarding there was just a big free for all as everyone tried to barge through the airport doors to the plane - They reckoned they called ticket numbers 1-65 first but they didn't - we were numbers 8 and 9 and the person let on before me was number 256! The plane was dirty and they'd ran out of most kinds of drinks. The only food they had was them tiny tubes of pringles and they were charging about £2 for them!! In future I will definately not fly with easy jet!

I've flown 4 times with Ryanair, never had a problem with them, & wouldn't hesitate to use them again.

Easyjet I wouldn't touch with a barge pole, as J Arthur Rank said, having watched the TV series about them, they come across as a Mickey mouse outfit with rude & surly staff. Half the time it looks like the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing.

One particular episode I recall had one of their planes stranded at a French airport because they had no credit arrangement with the fuel suppliers!. WTF ?.

Stellios (sp?) should be done under the trades description act for using that company name.

If you book well in advance through their website, Ryanair's prices piss all over Easyjet. (no I'm not a shareholder!) :)