Air France offered us an upgrade — then it didn’t

To the back of the plane with you! / Photo by Pat Card - Flickr
Brian Lee and Alisha Singh were looking forward to their Air France flight the same way all of us used to anticipate flying, and a few of us still do.

They were traveling from New York to Paris on an Air France Airbus A380, the famous double-decker superjumbo, and in premium economy class. “We were very excited,” he says.

But their excitement was taken to the next level when out of the blue, an Air France representative phoned his companion with an offer. Would she be interested in buying an upgrade to business class?

She has not traveled internationally before and thought they were trying to up-sell to the full business class fare. Upon informing me of the proposal from Air France, I explained that when premium cabins are empty sometimes they offer paid upgrades but it’s generally a considerable bargain.

Not knowing the exact offer, Lee decided to call back. After all, who wouldn’t want take that long trans-Atlantic flight in the best seats?

So Lee contacted Air France by phone and by email to get the details. But no details were forthcoming.

“We received several form letter responses refusing to honor our upgrade and other seemingly irrelevant responses such as, ‘It appears that two seats together are no longer available,” and so forth,” he says.

For example:

We apologize for the inconvenience. Currently, there are no other seats together available on the [flight].

You may request your seats to be changed and/or upgrades only during the checkin process.
Thank you for using the Air France E-Services.

That seemed odd. Either Air France had business class seats for these passengers, or it didn’t. But why call them with an offer if they weren’t prepared to follow through?

I asked Lee to forward all of his correspondence from Air France. I could see that it responded to each of his queries with form letters, some of them suggesting it hadn’t even bothered to read his email.

For that lapse in service alone, he probably deserves an upgrade to first class.

He adds,

Pretty appalling customer service in my opinion which has cast a very dark shadow over their brand.

This is our first time flying Air France. With our flight coming up so soon, I’m sure that I’m out of options, especially since no one at Air France can be bothered to respond appropriately.

I’ll just have to be content to remain in Premium Economy but would love an explanation as to why they offered an upgrade — whetting our appetite — and then just as quickly, pulled the rug out from under us.

I asked Air France if it could get him a better answer than a form letter. A representative called him to explain the airlines previous non-answers.

“I was contacted by Air France customer service in Montréal,” he told me. “They have no explanation for to this situation or why Ms. Singh was contacted, and refused to be of further assistance.”

That’s too bad. It makes me wonder if the call Singh received really was from Air France.

Either way, when someone phones you with an upgrade offer, which is highly unusual, you should ask them to send the details in writing. Had Singh done that, she might have been able to figure out if the upgrade was legit or not.

I can understand Lee’s disappointment. But things could be worse. He could be sitting in economy class.

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  • Raven_Altosk

    Ahhh….interesting.

  • Joe_D_Messina

    But the big picture consequence isn’t nil. Chris has used this case to alert consumers to the fact that Air France’s customer service struggles to answer simple questions, even when a mediator gets involved. He also used this as an opportunity to alert people to possible scams.

  • AUSSIEtraveller

    sounds like Air France were trying to fill bus class & so called passengers. Singhs offerred the deal from hell, but couldn’t make a decision, so caller kept calling passengers.

    By the time Singhs made a decision, they were all gone. Tough luck. Next time make a decision on the spot.

    As far as emails go, they were trying to tell you in a nice way, you were too bloody slow making a decision (you losers).

    It’s the old story, 1st in best dressed.

    Whoever Air France spoke to, should have said yes, NOT, can I think about it.

    Only losers can’t make decisions.

    In this world YOU MAKE A DECISION OR DIE.

    This is one of the reason why the world can longer afford public(civil) servants. They can’t make a decision to save their lives.

  • Michael__K

    asked and answered (see reply to bc)

  • Michael__K

    Thanks for confirming!  That’s amazing that you were able to dig this up, but not one of the CS reps contacted by the OP or Chris could.

    There’s no mention in the story about a prior email, so something probably went wrong there either on the OP’s end or on AF’s end…

  • TonyA_says

    As Linda said when people call CS they usually get the RES dept. They can help mainly with your booking. But normally they have no clue what the marketing dept is doing until the RES records reflect a change.

    Even in our own small office, emails are regularly sent out with deals from airlines or travel sources. Then someone calls in to ask about the email they got and our CSR has to dig up a copy before they can answer correctly. This is normal – the left does not know what the right hand is doing.

    Frankly, I have been hearing these upgrade offers for some time but I ignored them because I thought people were just pulling my leg. My sister got some kind of deal from KLM but not Air France. So after reading this story I decided to dig further. Wow what a shocker, even Air France does it.

    The most interesting thing is that the deal is closed during a phone conversation ONLY. Either you are ready to pay with your credit card or you lose your chance. As Emanon said you snooze you lose. I learned something new today.

  • TonyA_says

     The French emails were too polite. LOL

  • djp98374

    Why jump on it I n a heart beat. ?

    JFK to Paris isn’t all that much different than a cross country flight or a west coast trip to Hawaii.

    If this was a longer flight…like the 16 hr flights from the US to Australia or new Zealand that would be different.

    If the price was much lower than $600 pp then I’d take it. But $1000 for two people is a lot in my opinion.

    I’d be moe inclined to use miles to upgrade rather than pay.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Linda-Loudermilk-Tomberlin/1344557368 Linda Loudermilk Tomberlin

    Maybe once she said no, they sold those seats to someone else.  She had her chance, she passed on it.  Done is done.

  • TonyA_says

    I meant if I was offered a ~300 Euro upgrade offer, I will take it. Trying to upgrade with miles for Skyteam is difficult or very expensive since you almost need a full-fare ticket for international upgrades.

    Nevertheless the $27xx Bus Cls fare from AF is a bargain since that is half of the I-class current fare. If I was going to Paris in June, I will seriously consider it.

    Note Delta also sells the same $2.7K fare on “S” Bus Cls. effective 29JUN. An upgradable M Econ Class ticket will cost more before you can upgrade with miles. I have 3 family members loaded with Skyteam miles and cannot use them internationally since a discounted Business Class ticket is usually cheaper than a Delta/KLM/AF Y/B/M upgradable ticket.

  • Lindabator

    But it is not a scam – and just because they didn’t like the answer that Af no longer had 2 seats together, they had Chris approach the airlines once again, and that is probably why AF gave the final response – they may have fealt this was escalating into a legal hassle, and just refused to answer any further questions.

  • Michael__K

    Do you work for Air France?

    If not, let me get this straight: YOU know as an outsider that AF makes these calls.  But we shouldn’t expect customer-facing AF employees to have a clue whether or not their own company makes these calls?  And we shouldn’t expect them to expend any effort to find out when a customer or a consumer advocate asks them?  We should expect them to consider it a “legal” department matter???

  • sershev

    It was a one time offer and they should have taking it upon receiving a phone call. When they hanged up I am sure a representative called next customer on the list who probably took the offer. Therefore when they called back to a different call center no one knew what is going on. One time I receive a call from Continental with an offer to depart from an alternative airport and in exchange get a generous credit voucher. I took the offer because it was a one time opportunity. Would I call back, another representative would not know what I would be talking about. 

  • Lindabator

    YES – I worked for the airlines, and am STILL in the industry after 20 years – unlike you, who attacks anyone with knowledge on this site.  And once they had already given the answer to the client that they no longer had 2 seats, having a consumer advocate approach for more information may have looked like a possible legal problem to them, in which case, they are TRAINED to refuse to answer questions, as that is up to the legal department.  And as the reservations department does NOT make this offer, unless notes are made in their record (highly unlikely since they declined the offer), if they just called the res department, they would be unable to answer his questions.

  • Lindabator

    YES – I worked for the airlines, and am STILL in the industry after 20 years – unlike you, who attacks anyone with knowledge on this site.  And once they had already given the answer to the client that they no longer had 2 seats, having a consumer advocate approach for more information may have looked like a possible legal problem to them, in which case, they are TRAINED to refuse to answer questions, as that is up to the legal department.  And as the reservations department does NOT make this offer, unless notes are made in their record (highly unlikely since they declined the offer), if they just called the res department, they would be unable to answer his questions.

  • Sadie_Cee

    I am astonished!

  • Sadie_Cee

    I am astonished!

  • Michael__K

    Of course you ignored the actual question which was: “Do you work for Air France?” 

    If you are still in the “industry” I’m willing to bet that you answer your clients’ specific questions specifically and are sly enough not to disparage them and talk down to them with contempt like you do repeatedly to any poster who questions you on this blog.

    It was clear enough to Chris and to most of us reading this story that a response of: “two seats together are no longer available” is not a response to any question the OP’s actually asked (does it mean they could still  upgrade as long as they are willing to separately???)

  • Lindabator

    You are always such an a@@ to anyone who has more knowledge than you – I worked for United, worked WITH Air France as a top producer for them, and have been in the industry 20 years.  You always attack those here who know more than you do, so I never understood why you even botrher to post, as you obviously are not looking for knowledge, just wish to be rude and obnoxious.  And as a matter of fact, people FROM this site have used my services, and I have not found any complaints – I always go above and beyond to accommodate my clients – and if they wer flying on AF, i would have already have given them a head’s up, as I do with United.

  • Michael__K

    @Lindabator:disqus 
    I comment in many cases in support of fellow travellers who were treated poorly, even if it’s a minor issue and even though I don’t know them.

    You appear to be here to promote your own “knowledge” and to defend in every single case the companies whose products you sell, and to crudely insult and disparage anyone who calls into question any of the defenses or speculative excuses you bring up.

    In this case, it’s especially ironic because you throw the reservation agents’ knowledge under the bus.  You claim they are “clueless” (your word) about their own company’s practices.  Yet you expect others to not even question your unverifiable say-so about ever aspect of their company’s operation (even though you don’t work there).

    I appreciate genuine knowledge, but I have news for you: whatever domain “knowledge” you do or don’t have doesn’t give you any special standing to decree that a customer doesn’t deserve an answer to a reasonable question.

    I’ve dealt with many customers professionally (so I have my own knowledge in this area) and the only acceptable answer to a question I don’t know the answer to is: “I don’t know but I can try to find out.”

  • Michael__K

    moved below

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