Wow. I used to love JetBlue. I have recommended it to hundreds of people, since I've been flying JetBlue since 2 weeks after it went into business. But after tonight's two hours on the phone on hold and then finally with a very nice but ineffectual representative, I will be reevaluating my family's travel choices, and closing our JetBlue American Express cards. I will also open a formal complaint with American Express.
I called today (2/5/10) to redeem my remaining Old TrueBlue Award for a date five (5) months from today. I was told that there were no award seats available on the day I required, and that the closest days that had available seats on them were 4 days earlier or 4 days later! This, despite the fact that the vast majority of seats on the flight have not been booked! It is obvious that JetBlue has drastically reduced the amount of seats it makes available for Old Awards, and thus the thousands of dollars I have spent, and that my wife (who has remaining Old Awards and Points) has spent, were spent in vain. The awards we were earning have now become useless. I feel so betrayed by JetBlue, and I am extremely disappointed that this company that I had so much respect for has shown that, despite my loyal and constant patronage for ten years, they have treated me and my family unfairly.
The only thing I could do was to book a return flight using the Old Award, but the issue remains as to how my wife and I will GET to Chicago for the charity fundraiser we are attending (and that we help to organize, recommending to dozens of others which airline to fly to get there -- we will certainly be reevaluating those recommendations). It will be impossible to reach the number of New Points required to earn a reward under the new system -- and it is unreasonable for us to have to, in effect, re-earn the awards that we already earned. It is patently unfair and disingenuous for JetBlue to have changed the number of seats available on each flight so drastically while we still have awards that were earned with the reasonable expectation that if we tried to redeem them (5 months in advance! -- and on a weekday!) there would be award seats available -- especially when the flight is currently mostly empty.
I requested to speak to a supervisor, and I was told that "everyone at this level is a supervisor", and that no one had the power to make award seats available on any flight. Surely this is not the case - the company is making the decision to severely limit award seats, despite the fact that their customers have been operating under the agreement that their loyal patronage and use of the JetBlue American Express card would result in a reasonable expectation of a return on that investment.
I will now advise everyone I know and do business with that something has gone terribly wrong at this company, and it is to be avoided.
By the way, I submitted this complaint, at the recommendation of the representative at JetBlue, and after I submitted it, I got the following email back from them:
Thank you for contacting JetBlue Airways regarding your TrueBlue account. JetBlue has just completed
transitioning to a new reservation system and as a result, the TrueBlue help desk is currently
receiving a high volume of email and can no longer accept them at this time. We apologize for the
inconvenience.
So, I'm not only screwed, but they don't even hear me saying that they've screwed me.
What a disappointment.
0 comments