Comments on: Letter to Malaysia Airlines

By: Jordan

Jordan — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Incredible.

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Jordan,
I hope they will educate their customer service personnels in this area. It was frustrating when the guy kept shaking his head when I asked for a replacement wheelchair.

By: lucia

lucia — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

MAS tak ada sistem lah, that’s why such terrible handling of the situation. next time, peter, why not try another airline and see.

By: SH Tan

SH Tan — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Peter:
Sorry to hear about the mishap. It just breaks my heart to know that there are still so many deadwoods working in MAS despite all the customer bashing they had in the past. Looks like some things never change. It also boils down to the incompassion and sensivities of the general Malaysian population. Do not give up on this to get a satisfactory answer from the highest level in MAS management.

By: percolator

percolator — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

good, you kicked hard. just one point.
It should have been aimed at some specific individual to get things moving. What about that Suhaila (?) lady of Screenshot’s fame?
Otherwise, it just gives some MAS weasel, wiggle room to ‘tai-chi’

By: Anon

Anon — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I hope you’re able to follow up on this somehow. Maybe somebody knows someone in MAS and he/she could send the link to this post?

Somebody sent an email to a customer-service-type email address and it just bounced back. Check this http://tinyurl.com/ayogl
The matter was only resolved when ’somebody who knows somebody’ sent the link directly to that ’somebody’ in the organization, bypassing ‘customer service’.

Otherwise, you really need to go all the way and carbon copy all the newspaper editors in town

By: Silencers

Silencers — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

I can hardly believe this. MAS prided themselves in customer services and this happens? My goodness, you don’t need official procedures or policies in such a scenario. It’s just some courtesy and common sense! Shame on you, MAS.

By: ywl

ywl — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

There is some possibility that the MAS staff who told you that there was nothing MAS could do was either poorly trained and mis-informed, or simply was not authorised to handle a situation like what you described.

In such a scenerio, I would advocate going up the management chain of command. It may have proved worthwhile to ask to speak to the person’s supervisor, and if that did not work, the next step up, which would may be some manager.

There is also someone who represents each airline in airports to which the airline frequently flies. Typically, his designation is “Station Manager”. His level of authority should be enough for him to make decisions about loaning you a wheelchair for instance. It would likely have involved exercise of his discretionary powers as that involved property of the airline which is bot limited in numbers and strictly meant to be used within the airport [under normal circumstances]. But given the cirumstances, and a capable and understanding station manager, I think you might have gone away with a loaned wheelchair.

If that failed, there is a separate avenue which could have been explored - the KLIA itself may [should] have wheelchairs. But that would again mean going up to a high enough level in the mangement chain to reach someone who can make a decision [as opposed to lower level staff who have to go by the book only]. Sometimes, it can take quite a bit of forceful and insistent standing your ground to reach such a level, but many a time, it can be done.

As a last resort, if I was in your predicament, I would have approached other airlines which had staff in the airport to seek assistance on extraordinary and humanitarian grounds [you may need to go up the management chain]. And should a wheelchair be forthcoming, a nice letter to the Press praising the beyond-the-call-of-duty deed of that airline + stern criticism of the airline which failed you will be both a nice thank-you to the helpful airline and a stinging slap-in-the-face for the lousy one.

By: h.liew

h.liew — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

MAS lost my luggage once inside KLIA. It was a terrible experience. I have no faith in them whatsoever. The worst part is, they refused to reimburse my losses and asked me to claim from my travel insurance.

And then got this one time, I was stranded in KLIA for a few hours because my flight was over-booked. They then transferred me to fly with SIA instead and the change of schedule has delayed and messed up my arrival time in another country.

I really hate MAS.

By: Sam Cheah

Sam Cheah — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Peter,
In order to teach MAS a big lesson. I agree with Silencers you should post your experience through the media, especially newspapers. Let the public aware about this case