Air Canada and Customer Service: Oil and Water?

This week while reading about service recovery (fixing problems you’ve made for customers, and trying to keep those customers) I received a very interesting email from Air Canada.

I had written to Air Canada, you see, to complain about two consecutive cases of incredible incompetence and systems failure - problems that took more hours to resolve than our Brisbane-to-Vancouver flights took to fly.  (That is, over 16 hours each.)

Needless to say I was fuming about this. The first time ‘round, I wrote about the experience in detail and (because there was no link available for consumer affairs or complaints) sent it to the office of Air Canada’s then-CEO, Monte Brewer. The reply from his office was basically “sorry, and better luck with other airlines.”  Wow!  My letter had been perfectly polite - what a response!

The second time we would not have flown Air Canada, but we needed to get to Canada very quickly and Air Canada operates the only direct-flight service from Australia.  Another incredible disaster during the reservations process kept me on the phone from dinnertime until 1:30AM. This time I found a customer affairs link online and, to to help blow away the smoke that was pouring out of my ears, I submitted another polite and detailed letter of complaint.

I received, in reply, and email that is incredibly obscure.  What does it mean?  Do I need to do something?

Here is what I received:

2009/6/2 Air Canada Customer Relations <aircanada_customercare_en@mailca.custhelp.com>

Below is a summary of your request and our response.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

You may also update this correspondence by replying to this message.
Because your reply will be automatically processed, you MUST enter
your reply in the space below. Text entered into any other part of
this message will be discarded.

[===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]

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If your issue remains unresolved, please update this question at
https://aircanadacustomercare-en.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/aircanadacustomercare_en.cfg/php/enduser/acct_login.php?p_userid=ken@netgain.net.au&p_next_page=myq_upd.php&p_iid=602463&p_created=124374586


Subject
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pre-reservation and billing disasters


Discussion Thread
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Response (Susan Rabbitte) - 06/01/2009 10:58 AM
Thank you for your e-mail.

Residents outside of Canada and the United States are asked to address their concerns with our international Customer Relations Departments. For your convenience, we have forwarded your file to the appropriate office and provided the contact information for you.

Air Canada
Customer Relations
GSA/Airline Marketing Aust Pty Ltd.
Suite 1810, Level 18, 264 George St.
Sydney, NSW 2000
AUSTRALIA

Fax: 011 61 2 92516777

We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,
Customer Relations

Auto-Response - 05/31/2009 12:57 AM
Thank you for contacting us.

This is to confirm that we have received your message and there is no requirement to re-submit your information. Our current processing time is 5 business days for general customer concerns and 20 business days for baggage related issues. We will make every effort to respond sooner. We appreciate your patience and understanding as you await our response.

To complete transaction please ensure you click below on “Finish Submitting Question”.



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Thanks a lot Air Canada! Keep working on that customer service reputation!