Sunday, February 17, 2013

WELCOME, OSCAR CHICA LUCENA!!

Background info ... Oscar Chica Lucena appears to be a freelance Vueling consultant whose role is to answer awkward posts on Vueling's facebook pages in the guise of an independent third party. Here's my reply to Oscar!
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Oscar... that's sweet of you to defend Vueling and their fantastic social media team. I am something of a fantastic social media team myself so I always appreciate fantastic work in others.

However if you look at all my posts on
https://www.facebook.com/vueling.eu, you will see that their only reply - sometimes repeated three times in one post, was "Hello Mad, please send us your claim through http://bit.ly/QVL9zv, and our team will answer you as soon as possible. Regards". Also, in response to my emails, they have replied (three times) with a form letter which you can see at the bottom of my blog: http://madharper.blogspot.com.es/. It doesn't matter what I write to them, that's the answer I get.

Passengers are not obliged to know a thing about about "aeronautics culture" or "EUROCONTROL" in order to pursue their legal rights to compensation which is very clearly outlined in http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/consumers/protection_of_consumers/l24173_en.htm. Have you read this? Extraordinary circumstances are situations "beyond the control of the airline", for example, "security risk, political instability or severe weather that makes flying dangerous". I'm sure it's "very hard" finding a specific slot between two airports, but as that is what airlines are supposed to do, I don't see this as "extraordinatry cicumstances". And, as nearly all the flights were running from Orly during the time period I was there (13.00 - 19.30), then we can certainly rule out "severe weather". I could see the weather out of the window and it was mainly drizzle plus the odd snowflake (and I do mean one or two!).

What I CAN tell from my brief foray into "aeronautics culture" is that it is verging on airline policy to ignore complaints from passengers who have been denied boarding in the hope that a wall of silence or repeated stock responses will cause them to give up. Airlines are clearly banking (and I don't mean this in the aeronautical sense) on the fact that not many people will continue to pursue their rights faced with this kind of response. This is what "aeronautics culture" actually amounts to.

However the law on compensation for cancelled flights is extremely clear - and is also referenced in section 7.2.1. of Vueling's own Conditions of Carriage http://www.vueling.com/en/customer-services/conditions-of-carriage/. The form letter that I have been sent repeatedly ignores 7.2.1. entirely, and quotes 7.2.3 of the Conditions of Carriage which refers to reimbursement and delays (a wholly different situation and not one relevant to me).