Kudos to Cathay Pacific!
Sometimes a business pleasantly surprises me by providing more than excellent service. It's easy to complain when someone doesn't provide a good service, so I think it's just as important to say something when something really good happens. Cathay Pacific certainly surprised us with exceptionally good service during our recent travels to France.
During what turned-out to be a 36 hour long journey from Adelaide to meet her French host family from Macon, our sixteen year old daughter lost her purse somewhere on our 11 December 2010 flights from Adelaide to Melbourne then Melbourne to Hong Kong. After Hong Kong we flew to Paris then Lyon, where the host family met us. Ms16 was to be their guest for seven weeks while attending a French school in Macon as part of a international school exchange program. We were escorting her through the challenges of international travel to Lyon.
Losing her purse was heart-breaking as it had her cash in Euros for her stay in France, Australian cash, her travel money card, EFTPOS card, school ids and many other treasures. All but the older school IDs were replaceable but not without a hassle. Luckily, her passport was not with the lost purse.
We were at the Hong Kong International Airport when she saw that her purse was missing, while the three of us were waiting to board our next flight from Hong Kong to Paris. We thought the purse might have been lost at Melbourne Airport's international transit lounge so tried to report the loss to the Victoria Police, who turned-out to be uncontactable from an international phone at about midnight on a weekend. How does one dial '000' from Hong Kong to reach Victoria Police from an international call? It wasn't a life-threatening event so we didn't try calling 000, but neither did we have any luck contacting a 'real' Victoria Police phone number that we could call from an international phone, as it was only attended between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm. The lesson here is to plan any future losses or non-life threatening emergencies so that they fall within that 12 hour window.
Melbourne Airport had closed-down for the night and the phone number we found through Google for them was answered by their automatic call directory service but frustratingly passed repeatedly back to the initial message. I did hear, '... to speak with an assistant press 9...' so I pressed 9 and heard again after a short delay, 'Welcome to Melbourne International Airport. For xxx press 1, for yyy press 2, to speak with an assistant press 9.' It seemed that I was caught in endless loop pressing 9! No luck there.
I was able to telephone an actual person at the Australian Federal Police but she referred me back to Victoria Police because lost property wasn't within the AFP's jurisdiction.
And we weren't sure where the purse was last seen, whether it was in Melbourne Airport, or on the Cathay flight. I thought our chances were better if the purse had been lost on the plane rather than in the airport.
So Beth and our daughter reported the lost purse to the Cathay Pacific people in the First Class Lounge, which was the first official Cathay Pacific station that they could find in the huge HKIA. The Cathay person noted the details and said they would give us an update when we reached Paris. Which we thought would be that they didn't have any luck locating the purse.
We had 13 hours to worry about the lost purse as we flew from Hong Kong to Paris. Difficult to sleep under the circumstances.
At the Paris airport arrival gate the ground staff paged us and said that the purse had been found but that we had to see someone else for further information. This was unexpectedly good news! But we still didn't know if there was anything still in the purse.
After completing immigration formalities at Paris airport we found the correct baggage services counter and we were given an inventory of the contents of her purse. Amazingly, all the contents were still inside her purse. But while we were now in Paris, the purse wasn't - it would arrive on a later flight so we would have to come back to the airport to collect it. It wasn't expected until the next day. It would have been very helpful if the purse could have been forwarded to Lyon, but that wasn't possible. It would have to be collected from the Paris airport.
The baggage services people contracted by Cathay Pacific gave us a printed sheet with reference numbers to quote when we came to collect the purse. I was to learn later how important that specific piece of paper, not simply the reference number, was to be in reclaiming the purse.
When we told the baggage services people how surprised we were that first of all the purse had been found, and then that all the contents including the cash was still there, they said that it was very unusual for them not to return lost items completely intact to their owners. The airline obviously takes a lot of pride in being able to claim that, and with good reason.
So, much relieved, we collected our baggage from the Cathay Pacific arrivals hall to make our way to a different terminal where Air France would fly us to Lyon from Paris.
So, well done Cathay Pacific! Very impressive service! Thank you!
P.S. TRAVEL ESSENTIALS: a phone card to make international calls from a payphone.
P.P.S. I will write separately about the ordeal to actually retrieve the purse later, requiring us to deal with and overcome formidable French obstacles put-up by different Paris CDG airport personnel! Having dental fillings without anesthetic would have been more pleasant.
During what turned-out to be a 36 hour long journey from Adelaide to meet her French host family from Macon, our sixteen year old daughter lost her purse somewhere on our 11 December 2010 flights from Adelaide to Melbourne then Melbourne to Hong Kong. After Hong Kong we flew to Paris then Lyon, where the host family met us. Ms16 was to be their guest for seven weeks while attending a French school in Macon as part of a international school exchange program. We were escorting her through the challenges of international travel to Lyon.
Losing her purse was heart-breaking as it had her cash in Euros for her stay in France, Australian cash, her travel money card, EFTPOS card, school ids and many other treasures. All but the older school IDs were replaceable but not without a hassle. Luckily, her passport was not with the lost purse.
We were at the Hong Kong International Airport when she saw that her purse was missing, while the three of us were waiting to board our next flight from Hong Kong to Paris. We thought the purse might have been lost at Melbourne Airport's international transit lounge so tried to report the loss to the Victoria Police, who turned-out to be uncontactable from an international phone at about midnight on a weekend. How does one dial '000' from Hong Kong to reach Victoria Police from an international call? It wasn't a life-threatening event so we didn't try calling 000, but neither did we have any luck contacting a 'real' Victoria Police phone number that we could call from an international phone, as it was only attended between 7:00 am and 7:00 pm. The lesson here is to plan any future losses or non-life threatening emergencies so that they fall within that 12 hour window.
Melbourne Airport had closed-down for the night and the phone number we found through Google for them was answered by their automatic call directory service but frustratingly passed repeatedly back to the initial message. I did hear, '... to speak with an assistant press 9...' so I pressed 9 and heard again after a short delay, 'Welcome to Melbourne International Airport. For xxx press 1, for yyy press 2, to speak with an assistant press 9.' It seemed that I was caught in endless loop pressing 9! No luck there.
I was able to telephone an actual person at the Australian Federal Police but she referred me back to Victoria Police because lost property wasn't within the AFP's jurisdiction.
And we weren't sure where the purse was last seen, whether it was in Melbourne Airport, or on the Cathay flight. I thought our chances were better if the purse had been lost on the plane rather than in the airport.
So Beth and our daughter reported the lost purse to the Cathay Pacific people in the First Class Lounge, which was the first official Cathay Pacific station that they could find in the huge HKIA. The Cathay person noted the details and said they would give us an update when we reached Paris. Which we thought would be that they didn't have any luck locating the purse.
We had 13 hours to worry about the lost purse as we flew from Hong Kong to Paris. Difficult to sleep under the circumstances.
At the Paris airport arrival gate the ground staff paged us and said that the purse had been found but that we had to see someone else for further information. This was unexpectedly good news! But we still didn't know if there was anything still in the purse.
After completing immigration formalities at Paris airport we found the correct baggage services counter and we were given an inventory of the contents of her purse. Amazingly, all the contents were still inside her purse. But while we were now in Paris, the purse wasn't - it would arrive on a later flight so we would have to come back to the airport to collect it. It wasn't expected until the next day. It would have been very helpful if the purse could have been forwarded to Lyon, but that wasn't possible. It would have to be collected from the Paris airport.
The baggage services people contracted by Cathay Pacific gave us a printed sheet with reference numbers to quote when we came to collect the purse. I was to learn later how important that specific piece of paper, not simply the reference number, was to be in reclaiming the purse.
When we told the baggage services people how surprised we were that first of all the purse had been found, and then that all the contents including the cash was still there, they said that it was very unusual for them not to return lost items completely intact to their owners. The airline obviously takes a lot of pride in being able to claim that, and with good reason.
So, much relieved, we collected our baggage from the Cathay Pacific arrivals hall to make our way to a different terminal where Air France would fly us to Lyon from Paris.
So, well done Cathay Pacific! Very impressive service! Thank you!
P.S. TRAVEL ESSENTIALS: a phone card to make international calls from a payphone.
P.P.S. I will write separately about the ordeal to actually retrieve the purse later, requiring us to deal with and overcome formidable French obstacles put-up by different Paris CDG airport personnel! Having dental fillings without anesthetic would have been more pleasant.
posted by Rick's Rambles at 5:08 pm
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