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#11
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Air France? Ptui!
James Robinson wrote: wrote: In the glossary preceding this section is the definition of Force Majeu unusual and unforeseen circumstances beyond your control, the consequences of which could not have been avoided even if all due care had been exercised. Does illness count as force majeure? If you do a Web search on ["force majeure" illness], you'll see that it does. You will find that legally, it does not. Force Majeure provisions are typically geared toward events that a careful person could not foresee, such as riot, insurrection, political upheaval, catastrophic fires, earthquakes, or inability to provide a service because of actions of a third party, etc. Illness is considered to be something that people have to insure themselves against, hence the ready availablility of flight cancellation insurance. Further the force majeure clause in the ticket basically says that if the airline cancels flights because it has declared force majeure the passenger is protected. It does not give the passenger the right to declare force majeure because taking the flight wasn't convenient for him, even for health reasons. My main point in my OP, as some followups did note, was how Air France holds the customer at arm's length, like some bad wine. You will get the same treatment by all the airlines. You purchased a low-cost, non-refundable ticket, and now are asking for a refund. Exactly. One of the calculations in the low cost tickets is the fact that some people will buy the ticket then not use them. This helps defray the total cost. If the tickets were refundable they would, by necessity, be higher priced. What we have here is someone not willing to accept responsibility for his own decisions. I'm not particularly a fan of Air France. ('ve been on over 100 Air France flights (I'm including UTA in that, about half the total) and I don't recall ever getting what I'd call great service in the air. Their ground staff in Paris was OK. Their staff in San Francisco was extremely helpful in many cases.) But what's right is right and the original poster seems way out of line with his complaint. |
#12
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Air France? Ptui!
Matthias van Henk wrote: I am afraid this is is misunderstanding. Clauses like "force majeure" or "act of god" do not include illness or even death of passenger but only incidents that are caused by third party action (strike, war etc.) or natural disasters. This is a fact. You should contact a real lawyer, if you have doubts. Although Google is a good search engine, it will not be able to give you legal advice for your special situation. In my long year experience as a travel agent I can tell you that monetary damagages as a result of illness may be covered by the fare rules of your transportation contract with Air France. If not, you could have bought an insurance. You may tell us your exact fare name and I will be happy to pull the rules from my CRS and tell it to you. There is a pretty good definition of force majeure at http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/forcegen.shtml This is interesting, and on the legal particulars, tentatively I stand corrected. On the matter of travel insurance, I considered buying a policy, fully aware that I was advancing several thousand dollars not only for air tickets but also for a deposit to a tour group for an trip that was much farther in the future than I typically plan vacations. However, I decided that insurance would be worth its high premium -- about 10 percent of the total cost of the fares -- ONLY if I required refunds if the trip had to be cancelled. The alternative to receiving a refund, of course, is to accept credit for future services, minus the cost of reasonable administrative fees. I reasoned that no reputable business would refuse to negotiate this. With more than a month to go before the start of the trip, United Air and the tour operator DID negotiate it; instantly, by phone. (...and I didn't have to check for NONEGOT on my receipts, haha.) So, while we'll be missing out on the solar eclipse in Africa on March 29, at least we have the Alaskan aurora to look forward to in late September. But will we be taking our Thanksgiving dinner in Paris? I don't know that Air France won't negotiate; I just know that its institutional structure is making it impossible to find out. -- Charles Packer mailboxATcpacker.org http://cpacker.org/whatnews |
#13
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Air France? Ptui!
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#14
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Air France? Ptui!
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#15
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Air France? Ptui!
On Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:40:47 GMT, mrtravel
wrote: wrote: When I went to the Air France office to get credit for the trip we won't be able to take because of my wife's sudden illness, it took only a few seconds before I realized I wasn't going to get any further there than I had gotten with AF's phone center. The reason is that the guy there didn't have any more authority to settle the issue than did the phone people. In your mind, the only way to settle this dispute is if you win. Any company that values consumer goodwill would by this time have acted on the adage that "the customer is always right." I mean, I was willing to take time off from work and go down there in person, for chrissake. No, the customer isn't always right. If you want to buy a ticket that isn't as restrictive, pay more and buy one. Alternatively, why do you think there is trip insurance? The substantive issues -- the meaning of force majeure, etc., I'll take up in a thread shortly that I'll cross-post from misc.legal. A sick wife is probably not going to qualify as a "Force Majeure" as people often get sick. If you bought a ticket that is non refundable and non changeable, after selecting the box at their website that says you have read the restrictions, then it is not their fault you can't make a change or get a refund. At this point, I recommend submitting your request in a polite letter, and not lay the blame with them or tell them how bad the other people are. You need to be nice, and maybe you will get somewhere. If you don't get the answer you want, then you are free to sue. It's your right. I don't think you are going to get any closer to getting what you want by expanding your audience to this newsgroup, but apparently you were satisfied with the other online source you asked. So to sum it up, he bought a non-refundable ticket after declining advice on the website to contact the airline to check the restrictions. He also decided not to take out cancellation insurance. He then cancelled, (for a reason for which cancellation insurance would have paid out) and didn't like being held to the restrictions he had agreed to by making the booking. He posts his story here, doesn't get the sympathy he was hoping for, tries to turn it in to a criticism of an entire nation (I must remember that one when I next get bad service from a US company), and cross posts to at least one other group, hoping to get sympathy there. --==++AJC++==-- |
#16
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Air France? Ptui!
mrtravel wrote: If all were as easily to resolve as you state, why do you think travel insurance is a big business? Now, you have indicated it was offered to Because of all its sneering touts here on the Internet trying to strike fear into the hearts of infrequent travelers?... -- Charles Packer mailboxATcpacker.org http://cpacker.org/whatnews |
#17
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Air France? Ptui!
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#18
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Air France? Ptui!
qu'est-ce que c'est wrote:
[snip] People just don't understand: The French have no concept of "customer service". They don't know what it is, they don't undersand how it works, it is totally foreign to their culture. To the French, the customer is the enemy. French workers HATE their customers, almost as much as they hate having to show up for work (to do nothing for 35 hours a week while drawing full benefits and getting 6 weeks mandatory paid vacation per year). [snip] I dunno. I've gotten excellent service from: Hotel concierges Waiters in good restaurants Proprietors of fruit stands and delis I've even gotten good service from taxi drivers, although I've also gotten such *bad* service that I had to have the concierge send them away (e.g., arriving 45 min. early for a pre-arranged appointment and expecting me to pay for waiting time -- I just had Overall, I've found the French helpful if you will just take the trouble to learn a few hundred words of French and use them. OTOH, if you think that they ought to speak English because that is the right and proper language, you are likely to get what you deserve. (The bare _attempt_ to stumble through a sentence in French was enough to get me smiling help -- in English.) OTOH, when it comes to a "business" that is run by the government, like Air France, well, you can expect about as much service as you would from, say, the INS in the US. Or perhaps I should say that you should expect to get "serviced". the concierge call me another cab). -- I pledge allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, and to the republic which it established, one nation from many peoples, promising liberty and justice for all. Feel free to use the above variant pledge in your own postings. |
#19
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Air France? Ptui!
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#20
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Air France? Ptui!
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 19:42:06 GMT, Phoenix
wrote: Can you guys imagine a Russian coming to the US and getting bent out of shape because no one will answer him in his language? A bit psycho, no? Well, that's how the British and the US tourists act a lot of the time in foreign countries. It's also how some French behave in Russia. Expecting the poor Russian waiter to understand their French. |
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