Complaint Rating:

Air France's employee rudeness is institutionalized. I had purchased confirmed reservations on a trip with multiple legs. Air France suddenly moved one of those legs forward by 1 day, without adjusting the other legs, so I would have shown up at the connecting airport one day late.

I caught the error immediately - then had to spend 8 hours on the phone over the next week, either on hold (45 minutes average time to get through to their so-called Customer Service) or talking to incredibly rude, arrogant and downright hostile incompetents. Eventually got through to a somewhat polite supervisor. This person demanded that I had to be issued new tickets - by the travel agency, since there was more than 10 days left. The agency told Air France that they should issue the new tickets. Eventually the Air France supervisor who directed me to go to a local airport Air France counter to get new tickets issued. When I got there - guess what?

1. They made me and my wife wait OUTSIDE their office (during posted office hours) because the supervisor was "training" an employee (in rudeness, no doubt).
2. Asked us to return in 10 minutes after she heard why we were there (standing outside, of course).
3. When we came back, the supervisor just hastily left.
4. The now-trained rude and hostile employee demonstrated here training on us, with a dazzling display of racist arrogance and hostility that would have left Inspecteur Clouseau speechless in admiration. She flat-out refused to issue the new tickets. She demanded that we send our tickets to some address in some other state. I asked for a copy of the memo that authorized that, so I had some basis for sending my tickets out to an entity who had promised nothing. She refused, saying it was an "internal corporate communication". I asked to speak to the supervisor who told her to do this - she said that person was an internal corporate superrvisor who would not speak to customers.
She told me that I was not Air France's passenger! (Because the ticket, though it said AIR FRANCE, was issued by a prominent global travel agency that probably does 40% of Air France's ticket sales!)

This airline needs to fire its Customer Service Vice-President. The natural rudeness of their employees is doing fine at showing off the quality of the airline and their nation without a highly-paid VP training them to do so.

75% of Air France staff I have had the misfortune to deal with so far, are hostile, rude, and utterly, totally clueless. There have been a very few decent flight crew, and that one supervisor, who seem to be in the wrong company.

This rudeness has GOT to be corporate policy, if it is not a national trait. Maybe they have schools (I mean "ecoles") where they teach gratuitous rudeness?