I am still trying to get my luggage from Air France after a week in Paris. I have heard they lost over 20, 000 bags. This alone is unacceptable, but I would like to post about something more general that is clearly a huge problem with Air France's policies in general.
Every step of my journey has been fraught with incorrect information from Air France. They seem to have a habit of saying things that they cannot or will not actually do.
A simple example is this - I call "baggage services" and a recorded voice informs me that my wait time on hold will be 7 minutes. Not "approximately 7 minutes, mind you, it claims it will be a 7 minute wait. Following that I am on hold for over 20 minutes.
They do not seem to understand that this alone is already a deplorable way to treat a customer. If the recorded voice came back after 7 minutes and updated the time estimate, or if it simply did not tell me how long I would be waiting, that would be much better than claiming 7 minutes and then not delivering on that promise.
In general, this has been my continual experience with Air France. Another more extreme example occurred during take off from JFK to Paris. After many delays, all of which contained this same over-promise/under-deliver characteristic, we were still waiting to take off after sitting on the plane for well over 2 hours. When we finally moved away from the gate, the pilot informed us we still had to wait for the plane to be de-iced, but assured us this would take no more than 10 minutes. In fact, it took well over 30 minutes, and we continued to sit still for another 30 minutes after that with no information about when we might finally move ahead.
I could give countless other examples of this, as it seems to be acceptable to Air France to essentially lie to its customers and never to recognize or apologize for giving entirely inaccurate information during times when information is the most important thing they can give to a customer.
As I sit here now, I had been told my luggage (actually only one of my two bags) was to be delivered four hours ago. I actually spoke to the delivery person and was told this. When I finally called Air France to complain, they didn't even seem to understand why this was a problem until I explained that I am a virtual prisoner in Paris because I do not want to miss the delivery. They have not set up any system to track or contact the courier for an update on the arrival of the delivery.
(While the bag was eventually delivered, I still feel that Air France has no interest in taking proper care of paying customers.)
