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Southwest Airline’s former loyal customer

Today I received a posted a response letter to Southwest Airlines’ Customer Relations & Rapid Rewards department in response to a letter I received from them that was sorely disappointing. The letter reads:

“Dear Ms. Carter,

Thank you for your letter on January 22, 2008. I really appreciate your bringing to my attention the dangers to my Southwest Rapid Rewards account. I am concerned about the security breach you wrote about in the letter because I have never let my personal account information be shared with anybody not even my sister.

As you can tell I am a very frequent flyer of Southwest Airlines having flown hundreds of segments on your airline for both work and pleasure. It disturbs greatly that you have written that you will no longer be responsible for the security of my account because you suspect that Awards have been sold, brokered, or bartered.

I did not sell my awards ticket although I often give them away to my sister and relatives for their use as my company always covers any last minute travel I make, and I always book early on Click n’ Save specials for personal travel and find very little use of the Awards for myself. This activity has caused you to flag my account as being suspect, which is understandable, but it is still very disturbing that instead of writing to inquire if such a thing has happened the airline policy is to no longer protect the consumer account and use coercion upon loyal Southwest flyers.

I wanted to write to express my great disappointment in Southwest Airlines and feel that my loyalty to your company is unwarranted and hope that in the future should any Southwest flyer’s account be compromised, that you would stand behind your members and not behind suspicions.

Sincerely yours, a very frequent flyer.”

I started using Southwest over 10 years ago on my first flight to Chicago to visit my future college. I tell my friends how I love it, but today I was sorely disappointed in the thingly veiled threat I got as a letter from them. You’d think that somebody who has flown hundreds, yes hundreds of flights with them would deserve more trust or at least a different form letter? Maybe I’m asking too much of corporate america and all that exists now between a consumer and company is suspicion and blame.

Add comment January 29th, 2008

What about Viacom?

Yesterday at a closing session of SxSW Bruce Sterling mentioned that Viacom is suing Google. Instead of being interested in the suit I wanted to find out who Viacom owned and if I liked their content.

I stumbled upon the CJR or Columbia Journalism Review. I haven’t really perused this site since the last election where I found them to be a great neutral resource for me to judge if Rupert Murdoch owned organizations were truly being partial and how the press process works.

Columbia Journalism Review article called Before Jon Stewart.

Add comment June 12th, 2007

Wal-Mart gutsy or just plain dumb?

vs.

Today I saw an article on LVMH from BusinessWeek by Pallavi Gogoi. It is titled  Wal-Mart’s Luxury Problem. I’ve been paying more attention to LVMH since my friend Katy started working there for Moet Hennesey. For those who don’t know LVMH is the luxury brand company that owns Louis Vuitton, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs etc… For you women out there who love purses, you know who LVMH is.

The short of it is Wal-Mart is being sued by LVMH for carrying counterfit Fendi’s at its Sam’s Club store. Most people trust a large store such as Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart to carry discounted versions of the same products found for full price elsewhere. Hence we as consumers do not question products found at these stores.

It turns out that we should be questioning why Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart is so much cheaper for these luxury brands. LVMH claims that they are fakes, hence the cheap price. IF I was a fan of the Waltons and IF this is the first time this has ever happened to the poor unsuspecting Wal-Mart buyers, I would say Wal-Mart is plain dumb.

However, history shows that this has happened to them in the past, and the executives have even allowed it to continue happening until the court decided its case despite an injunction. What does it mean? Wal-Mart has “chutz-pah” or guts.

You decide, dumb or gutsy.

Add comment July 8th, 2006