Saturday, March 25, 2006

More mediocre performance - this time Continental Airlines

Contained below is a message I sent to Continental about their excellent web site and their President's club. Let's see what happens. During the last tirade I netted 2,500 miles.

Subject: More tiring experiences with your company

Message: On Monday March 13, 2006 I was anticipating an mid-morning flight and needed to avail myself of the use of the Presidents Club early the next morning. Thinking erroneously that online would be a nice fast easy way to get my membership and have a temporary card in my hand for the morning, I went to the web site to sign in. It dutifully took all of my personal information, including credit card data and One Pass number. When the process was completed it said to check my email. Great I thought, I'll go over pick up my temporary card and go into the club in the morning. Instead, I received this email:


>Thank you for purchasing a Presidents Club membership.
>Your application should be processed within 48
>hours and you may begin enjoying the benefits of
>membership at any of our Presidents Club locations.
>If you visit a Presidents Club prior to
>receiving your card, simply provide the clubroom
>representative with a copy of this e-mail and
>photo identification.


There was no warning that this process was not an instant process and that there would be delays that I should anticipate. So I did as the mail said and took the printout and my id to the club. How unfortunate for me that the system didn't know anything about me and I had to hold up the line while waiting for the people at the club to determine that I should be granted access. To this date I have not received either permanent or temporary card so while I may be able to get into a Contintental club, I can not avail myself of the services of any of your partner airlines clubs. Thank you once again for continuing to meet my ever decreasing expectations on my dealings with Continental and your wonderful hub airport of Newark NJ, which 80% of the time has broken AirTrans, and generally miserable service.


It is so nice being nearly held hostage by hub and spoke airlines.

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