Singapore Airlines review: Costs compensation & poor customer service complaints

Seats that we paid for and confirmed very much earlier had been unfairly re-assigned later on to another person who was their preferred customer without first obtaining our consent or approval;

SIA customer service gave us the explanation that the seat was re=assigned due to flight schedule change but it turned out to be false and inaccurate. When they realized, they were wrong, they subsequently changed their position to cancellation and re-booking of our flight by their customer service agents.We did not cancel the flight and it was an error committed by their customer service agent. Customer service agent inadvertently cancelled it and they corrected their mistake by re-booking it again. When the customer service agent re-booked our flight they ensured us that our original seats selection would be the same and it would remain intact. We periodically checked with the customer service agents to ensure that our original seats selection were intact. They confirmed and re-confirmed that our original paid seats were unchanged. We also went into their on-line booking website to confirm that our original seat selections remained intact. On checking in (2 days before flight), we discovered that one of our paid seat was re-assigned to another customer without our prior knowledge and approval. We discovered our seat was re-assigned to a standard seat at the back of the plane. Immediately. we called the customer service agents on the phone to reinstate our paid seats back but they refused to do it. The customer service agents on the phone did not converse well in English and they gave us all the wrong information regarding the seat change. It was extremely difficult to get through to them on the phone and we had to wait for a long time before we could speak to someone. Since customer service agents refused to correct their errors, we had left with no option but to go to the headquarters at Changi airport to address their errors with senior management. Unfortunately, senior management there could not be reached. The duty manager at airport informed us our paid seat had been changed last minute due to preferred customer of SIA had kicked us out due to his importance. It was unprofessional and unethical for them to do that. We had to verbally fight all the way through at each encounter. Even at the gate, we had to argue embarrassingly to get our seat back when the gate manager had to seek approval from the preferred customer. Escalated the complaints to the senior management (CEO) who did not even respond to our complaints. Actual costs incurred to resolve the airline mistakes amounted to SGD429.65 and they only agreed to issue a voucher of SGD75 which is inadequate to compensate for the actual costs incurred. Moreover, the above costs do not include the additional inherent cost of lost vacation time and stress/frustrations to deal with their mistakes that they had created for us. Customer service investigation focused mainly on the outcome but do not address and provide fair customer resolution to their mistakes they had committed. The last response received from the customer service agent was that they are happy with the investigation and no further communication and action would be taken i.e. refused to address their mistakes committed and refused to compensate fairly the costs that we had incurred.

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