MBA Geek

It’s been just under three weeks since we wrote to both RyanAir and FlyBe about our cancelled flights and subsequent reimbursement and I’m delighted to say that today we received a letter from FlyBe who have reimbursed us for our alternative travel arrangements. I must say I’m really happy with the way they have responded to us and I will be telling all my friends of their great customer ethic.

When I buy something, I’m not one to go for an extended service plan, but if I have a problem I will write to the company in question to see if they will remediate the problem. In this case, it was a service that we had bought, but it was no different; I did write to both companies we had issues with, and it’s great to get a positive response, at least from one of them.

I’ll keep you posted on what happens on the RyanAir front …

It’s been interesting to watch Apple’s stock price over the last few days and over the last few hours since the iPad has been announced. Yesterday was characteristed by a steady increase in price, probably as the market started to feel the anticipation around the product launch. As the product was being announced the market dipped as it didn’t seem as exciting as everyone thought. However, when the price point was announces; a price point that would certainly make the product was very attractive to consumers; the price rose once again.

Product announcements can make or break a company. You can imagine what would happen if a company announced it had a cure for Mesothelioma cancer, only to be exposed as a fraud a few days after. It would probably be quite hard to recover from something like that. In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye on Apple and see what happens to their stock over the next few days, as the industry starts to get their hands on the initial devices.

photo credit: kevinzim

Well, it’s been 2 weeks since I sent my complaint to the airlines, one to RyanAir and one to FlyBe; and I still haven’t had a reply or even an acknowledgement for my letter. So tomorrow I’ll be posting another copy of the letters to see if I can get the ball rolling. I don’t know if I’ll be getting a positive response, I was expecting some sort of acknowledgement. It’s not like I’m sending spam about the best acne remedy around; I probably wouldn’t expect a response from that.

As a customer, it’s quite annoying to be ignored by a company I have given my money to. I’m quite keen to try and get to the bottom of this.

Well, it’s only been a few hours since Britain has raised the threat level to “Severe”. But what does this mean to the business world. Well, the biggest issue is that people tend to be a bit more conservative when they perceive risk. This could have a negative effect on the market, which can have knock-on effects to the whole economy.

I tend to believe though that these things are more pronounced when they are announced. People adapt to new situations quite easily and it’s only a matter of time before things adjust themselves. Things just keep going, mush like a run of the mill nordic track treadmill. Still, it would be better if the threat level comes down, don’t you think?

My wife had a negative experience with Tesco a couple of days ago, where they cancelled her shopping delivery without any prior warning. It was interested to watch Tesco’s response, which was initially going to make a negative experience even worse. When she phone to enquire about the order she was fobbed off and she wrote an extremely annoyed letter of complaint. It took them 3 days to respond, which did nothing to help improve the situation; but last night she got an email back with an apology and a £10 voucher.

My wife was satisfied with this; the voucher helped but what she was really after was an apology. The problem here however is that for 3 solid days, all her friends and family have been hearing about the negative experience and all this affects their perception of the retailer. The situation could have been turned on its head if the person at the other end of the phone when she called had the presence to offer an apology and deal with her complaint successfully; much like a quick trim from some problematic tuft . Unfortunately, however, a complaint needs to filter though numerous stages before it can be dealt with successfully and all this does is increase the frustration at the client’s end.

We had some travel disruption recently and I came up first hand against the EU Directive regulating passenger rights. It’s interesting to note that the Directive not only protects passengers, but it also helps even the playing field between different airlines. Budget airlines reduce their cost by removing the service element from their offering, but the EU Directive provides a baseline of service that helps even out the playing field between the companies. I doesn’t matter if we’re talking airlines or rv towing companies, competition is usually a good thing, but not at the expensive of discriminating or ill-treating customers. And that’s what the EU Regulation 261/2004 provide for.

Interesting area which I never really looked into much. I’ll blog more when I learn more about it.