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EasyJet Nightmare
I left London yesterday morning, going to Stansted Airport to take an EasyJet flight home till Friday, when I am going back to the UK. I arrived at check-in at 11am for the one o’clock flight. There was no sign of check-in-Ljubljana point. So I went to one of the other check-ins asking where was the check in for LJB flight.
Lady: Well, you can check in anywhere, also with me ..
Bojana: Ok, cool …
EasyJet lady: ohh, I forgot … but Ljubljana flight has been cancelled
Bojana: Whaaaaaaat??????
From this point on, the nightmare began. There were 12 Slovenian people of us, and couple of English. Have you seen the TERMINAL? There was a slight resemblance;)) There were all these EasyJet people at the Customer Information point, but all of them were only “handling agents” apparently not being able to do a thing, apart from telling us that the next flight was on Tuesday.
Well, the fact that they did not inform us about cancellation made it even harder. They were not open to any discussion, constantly repeating that the are only “handling agents”. Ok, after some hours we were able to speak *on the phone* to some kind of manager in Luton. Richard something, who was stubborn, was trying to persuade us that we received those emails that were supposed to be sent out on 27th of July. None of us got those emails, plus there were people amongst us that left Ljubljana only on 28th which they would never have done, had they known the flight had been cancelled.
Anyway, that Richard kept saying he can not do a thing, and I kept repeating we would have not settled for any less than getting back home on Sunday, even if they had have to order a private jet. They cancelled the flight, we were not notified about it and they should have dealt with consequences in order.
Step by step, hour by hour, talking to loads of “handling agents” and Richard, we managed to book the flight from Gatwick to Venice at 6pm, getting just the last free seats - what a luck! OK, then we needed the transportation first from Stansted to Gatwick and then from Venice to Ljubljana. They wanted to send us on a train and again we did not agree. We requested a bus from one airport to another and then one to our final destination - from Venice to Ljubljana (there was no other transport anyway late at nite).
The flight was cancelled *due to operational reasons* which we all knew were too few passengers, so was not cancelled due to any higher power and they were obliged by their own terms and conditions to ensure us to get to our final destination.
To make a long, but really long and traumatising and tiring story short, by 5pm approximately, we managed to negotiate the transport from Stansted to Gatwick, the food vouchers, and the transport from Venice to Ljubljana. All 12 of us, who really performed as a team, were persistant untill the end. Loads of blah blah, tons of stupid excuses and ignorant behaviour from their side, talking to many “handling agents”, Richard and some Alex, we finnaly made it. Got home at 3 am. I still have a headache, especially when I think that I need to take their flight back to London on Friday.
Apparently four of us were university people, employed at UL, and we had all been to London for projects or a workshop, which means we will get the tickets reimbursed. We could have taken Adria. But we did not, as we are of opinion that it does not matter whether it is EC money, our money or UL money, we should not be wasting it. Well, lesson learned.
I am (or was until recently) a frequent passenger on EasyJet and did not had a bad experience before. But this really outweighted all the trust I had in them. We had to fight to get to Ljubljana, they were quite happy with leaving us in London till Tuesday. Their attitude was highly disturbing, like we were a piece of luggage … like if we had have no obligations and places to be today …
On Friday, I will call to the airport to check whether the flight is still shceduled;) And even then I won’t be quite certain.
By Nana | July 3, 2006 | Topics: Les Voyages |
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:52 pm
Ouch.
Can’t quite offer help for 12 people, but if you and a couple others ever need transport being in the area (Venice, Trieste, ect) if something like this happens again (let’s hope it doesn’t) yell my way. I run a well-known free taxi service towards Ljubljana.
July 3rd, 2006 at 11:56 pm
Ah, same thing happened to me when I was going from Amsterdam to Ljubljana. Adrai Airways cancelled on me. ‘Technical problems’. Really? For 6 passengers? What was the problem? They left the keys inside and closed the door? Damn!
So I was flying from Amsterdam to London (where I spent really nice 4 hours on the Heathrow), from London to Brnik where we couldn’t land. From Brnik to Maribor, from Maribor to Brnik (by bus) and from Brnik to Ljubljana by cab. I was delayed for about 12 hours. It was kinda fun.
July 4th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Thanks Heck, much appreciated;)
BigWhale, I know, but at least Adria is not reluctant to offer a substitute plan ..those guys there were acting like we were asking something completely impossible;)
I did not mind being delayed but being treated like no one cared how we were going to get home.