The squeaky wheel...

This posting is not, as you may have guessed from the title, about bike maintenance. I could write you several paragraphs on that if you like, but what I mean is closer to the saying 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease.'  Let me explain.

I have either written about our poor customer service incident with Lufthansa or at least referred to it in some snide way in a previous blog post. But since I can't even remember if I mentioned it, you probably can't remember reading about it and so I will give you a quick summary of what happened. In early January we flew back from Cairo and had a layover at Frankfurt airport. The layover was supposed to be four hours before we could take our one hour flight back to Hannover. And since it was still holiday travel season, all earlier flights were booked. Frankfurt airport, however, has something that I haven't experienced for a long time - a Hooters. That's right, after bland food and women covered head to toe in Egypt, we killed a couple of hours watching American football and eating hot wings, served by waitresses in tight t-shirts, shiny nylons and scrunchy socks.  Hooters fashion has not changed since 1986. Anyway, we got to the gate about an hour before our flight to Hannover was supposed to leave. Shortly thereafter, the Lufthansa staff announced that there was a change in the aircraft and they would not be able to take all passengers. They asked for volunteers who would like to move to another flight or take a train. No one got up. A few minutes later, there was an announcement "these passengers are now placed on stand-by..." and they called our names, along with those of about 10 other passengers.

Every couple has roles that they play and in stressful customer service situations it's usually me that does all the talking. So when we went up to the counter to patiently address this issue with our friendly customer service representative, Brian stood off to the side. She explained to me that they have to take a smaller airplane than planned, therefore the flight was overbooked. We could either wait four more hours for a flight or get on the train to Hannover. Lufthansa would be happy to provide us with ten euro meal coupons valid anywhere in the airport. That was it. There were no bonus miles, no free tickets, no upgrades, and no begging or groveling. And why us and not other passengers? Because, friendly representative explains,  it's based on fares - we paid less for our tickets than other passengers and therefore we get bumped. At this point Brian said some words that are not family-friendly and the agent told us that she could have given us any reason but just wanted to be honest with us. Well gosh, thanks. She also said that by law the airline does not have to provide any compensation to its customers if they cannot fly due to a change in equipment.

We ended up taking the train, getting in just a little later than we would have anyway, and getting our bag delivered the next day. Nonetheless, my American customer service standards were offended and I decided to write a complaint letter. Why not? I figured, the worst that can happen is they ignore it. I had almost forgotten about the letter when two weeks ago I received an email from Lufthansa customer service. "Very sorry for the inconvenience... yadda yadda.... you are each eligible for 250 euros in compensation, please send us your bank account information"!!! Not miles, not credit, cash money.

The deposit came through today! We are putting it away for our April trip to Budapest, Bratislava, and Prague. Since have mostly paid for the hotels and tickets already, our complaining money might cover the rest of the trip. I'm not sure how far a euro goes in Budapest (not far, I think. They don't even use euros in Hungary). Forget spring break, in Daytona Beach or Cancun... we are heading for spring break Slovakia!

So I guess in Germany, at least with airlines, complaining works. This squeaking wheel just got greased with 500 euros. Hopefully my next bike tune up is a lot cheaper than that.