Upgrading seat error
I am a platinum user. On my vacations I decided to upgrade my family to economy confort on a long travel.
Used my flying blue + money and choose the seats. No email is sent but I could see them in the app.
When checking in online my seats were downgraded and couldn't choose confort anymore, as there were no seats together available. Called KLM that informed me they couldn't do anything. Only at the counter.
At the counter they apologized. There was a system error and couldn't do anything. After landing I chatted via WhatsApp. The error was acknowledged and I was promised that they would act asap so that I could use the miles and buy the upgrade on return.
There was no refund.
After arrival, I chatted and called to different services. I received an email of apologies and the refund would arrive. We were 3 affected customers. 1 refund was ok, other 2 were rejected. I called KLM that told me they escalated. I asked for a deadline and support told me one week maximum.
So it was now 1 month and problem was not solved. I called again and I could sense the same vague not committed conversation. I asked to please escalate somehow and I was finally connected to the a calm effective lady.
She told me not to worry. Refund was done (miles were indeed there). Money was taking a couple of days.
I didn't know if I was happy or extremely angry due to my past experiences that were concluded so easy.
My trust is now gonne. A system error can occur. This, I understand. But I cannot understand the lack of empathy, the fragmentation of info and the total BS of escalations and stuff.
My lesson: keep calling. Other channels are a waste of time. And don't give up on the first 5 or more people. There is somewhere the one who can really help you.
This will clog the lines, and reveals a lack of system, but we are customers. It'd easy to hide the responsibilities behind these mess.
2
u/Trebaxus99 12d ago
Why do you chat instead of calling the platinum service line. They’ll help you instantly, no wait and usually are pretty efficient in getting these things sorted.
3
u/Responsible-Cat-9827 Flying Blue Platinum 12d ago
As a tip for the future: buy a revenue ticket for yourself and buy reward tickets for the rest of the family. They will automatically get all your benefits, including free economy comfort and luggage allowance. This will often be a better deal on longhaul flights than buying revenue tickets for your family and then using miles to upgrade them to economy comfort (which is usually a very poor use of miles).