How To Make Travel Complaints

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Brancatelli’s squeaky-wheel theory of business travel was developed after surviving a generation of incompetent airlines, haughty hotels, and subcompact rental cars reeking of the previous driver’s cigar smoke.

The way I see it, the travel industry, in general, long ago abandoned any pretense of providing good service—or even meeting their minimum published standards. They are also spectacularly inept at service recovery. Giving hundreds of millions of customers what they paid for and making good when things go wrong is simply too expensive in a high-volume, low-margin business.

I believe the bean counters have decided that the best way to make money in travel is to treat everyone poorly and make amends only to the select few who go to the extraordinary effort of complaining about how they are treated. In other words, grease the squeaky wheels and let the silent traveling majority suffer.

But you have to know how to squeak effectively. Screaming at a beleaguered ticket agent or frontline clerk won’t get you far. You need to craft a good, crisp letter of complaint, complete with a demand for appropriate compensation. And you need to target your letter to someone who can actually resolve your problem.

Here are 10 tips—from the beginning of the process to resolution—to make sure that your complaint squeaks the loudest and gets the most metaphoric grease.

1. Go for Immediate Gratification
The best complaint letter is the one you never have to write, so do whatever you can to solve the problem on the spot. If you can’t get instant gratification from the person with whom you’re dealing, speak to someone higher up the food chain. Schedule permitting, it’s worth investing some time in an on-site, ad hoc arbitration session.

2. Take Good Notes
As a business traveler, you’ll often have a sense very early in the process when something is amiss. Start taking notes immediately: Get times, places, names, and as many specifics as you can. Hold on to all receipts, tickets, boarding passes, and anything else that is part of the paper trail. And think like a businessperson: Keep track of anything and everything you’d want to know if it were your job to resolve the situation retroactively.

3. Act Fast
Don’t throw your grievance file in the corner with your expense account. The longer you wait, the less likely it is that you’ll get any satisfaction. Initiate your complaint as soon as you get home.

4. Go With Paper
Despite how reliant we all are on email, most airlines and hotels are unwilling or unable to resolve problems electronically. Rely on an old-fashioned paper letter and snail mail. Use company stationery and never send a handwritten note. Make sure to attach copies, not originals, of all relevant pieces of the paper trail.

5. Send the Complaint to a Specific Person
Letters generically addressed to customer service will be handled generically. If your problem is with a particular hotel or specific airport station, find out the name of the general manager or station manager and address the letter to that person. Unhappy with the frequent-travel program? Write to the vice president of marketing. If your problem is with a hotel chain, airline, or car-rental firm, write to the chief executive. You probably won’t get a response directly from the top dog, but most C-suite executives have staff specifically charged with handling letters addressed to them. (An interesting side note: A lot of business travelers I know have resolved their complaints by writing to the firm’s assistant general counsel. I don’t know why, but it seems to work.)

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