Northwest Blows

I can't stand Northwest Airlines. Their customer service is perhaps the worst I've seen and at every interaction they somehow make you feel like an inconvenience. I've never experienced such consistently bad service from flight attendants, customer service phone reps and the gate agents. I get the sense that they really believe that I am lucky to have their airline to fly on. Maybe it's just me, or maybe everyone I know refers to Northwest as Northwurst (not to be confused with knoxwurst).

I mentioned earlier some of the pain I was going through around my World Perks Elite status. The dumbness of this was put into perspective relative to my friend's recent loss of his house and stuff. I contacted NWA today to find out what had happened regarding my status upgrade and was once again give the run around. I had been told by the Worldperks group to call customer service, who told me to send in a letter. I sent the letter in (4 times, because they kept claiming they didn't receive it) and was never contacted. When I called in, their response was to call the Worldperks group where the whole thing had started.

Northwest had originally told me that because of erroneous information their agents had provided me, they would "take this into consideration" around my status at the end of the year. The agent proceeded to tell me today that "take into consideration" doesn't really mean anything. They offered me a "Challange" to get to my elite status that seemed great at first. Simply fly five round trips of a certain class in the next 90 days and I would receive the status I had earned. Since I have flights booked the next five weeks, I asked her to take a look at what it would take to upgrade those flights. The average ticket of the correct class would run about $1,200 (as compared to the average of $250 i had paid). Amazing.

I didn't say this on the phone, but my hope is that as Delta assimilates Northwest, they apply their customer service skills to the company and purge themselves of the NWA attitude and people that make Northwest such a customer unfriendly company.