Wake Up!

People have become numb to terrible service from businesses today.  And why wouldn’t we be numb?  The airline ticket agent tells us our flight will be delayed several hours without the least concern for the disruption it causes, and an apology is out of the question.  Household subcontractors give us a 4 hour window when the will arrive -and then often fail to show.  The surly waiter, the physician that expects us to wait over an hour to see him and then spends a few precious moments with us without fully explaining the illness and the treatment options, the unresponsive clerk at the store – we are so used to these examples of inexcusable service that we just accept it and move on to the next version.  Numb?  We’re catatonic.

This blog, and the website it supports, www.consumerconnection.com, is dedicated to changing this status quo.  How do I intend to do that, you ask?  Well, my first step is to enlist all of you to help.  Because this will be a group effort requiring everyone to participate.  And we can begin by no longer accepting poor service by the businesses and institutions that we interact with on a daily basis.  Stop accepting rude service, substandard work and shoddy business practices.  In short people, wake up to the problem and let’s do something about it.  

I hope to make this blog as much about acknowledging people and companies who provide exemplary service as much as I (and we) will skewer those who fail us.  I’d like to make note of an example of the former in this post.  I fly a lot, and mostly with American Airlines.  (More to come on American in future posts)  This airline has its share of good and bad employees but none better than a flight attendant on a recent flight from Chicago to Tampa.  The flight attendant was a man named AJ.  Unfortunately that is all the information I have.  On this flight I was fortunate to be upgraded to first class.  AJ served us with perfection, making sure each passenger had everything he/she needed throughout the long flight.  Then, at the end of the flight AJ spoke with each passenger and thanked us, sincerely, for flying with American.  He personally made this flight actually enjoyable.  Thanks AJ!

American, you need to reward AJ and, more importantly, figure out how to get more of your flight attendants to be like AJ.