The Best Airline Just Got Rid Of Phone Customer Service
This article is more than 2 years old
This last Saturday, Frontier Airlines announced and proceeded with no longer supporting live-call customer support. Now, when attempting to reach customer support, customers must go through an online chatbot, social media channels, or WhatsApp. This could be an ongoing trend in the industry.
The buckling pressure from the Department of Transportation, and customers alike were likely at the center of this change by Frontier Airlines. But with the move to only online customer support, Frontier Airlines can cut a significant overhead cost. This could possibly bring lower flight costs in the long and short term.
Frontier Airlines is a well-known low-cost airline famous for its cost-cutting measures to ensure that it can have low prices for customers. That being said, they have many hidden fees and extra charges that rack up the price of those tickets. The latter has been brought to the forefront in recent weeks.
One such example is the GoWild! Pass that Frontier Airlines offered last week. It was only $599 for the option to fly all year round. The extra cost was that you would be charged double that price at the end of the one-year pass, renewing the yearly pass automatically if it is not canceled.
Small additional fees, such as needing to pay $.01 per flight and baggage fees add up quickly to about $15. On top of that Frontier Airlines will only check your bag as your board, adding additional charges to your already now mounting cost.
The lack of live customer service by Frontier Airlines will make it easier for them to gate certain issues. One such issue that is notably the most important to them, we’re sure, is the refund requests that they are swamped on.
Frontier Airlines was forced to pay a fine alongside five other airlines for this problem. Though Frontier Airlines is the only one in the listings to be an American company. The remaining fines of an overall six million dollars were split among the other carriers.
Frontier Airlines though continues to face harsher realities as these fines were in response to the DOT. The airlines had not refunded tickets on time when they needed to be back to the customer. These are all tactics to lower the overwhelming lawsuit in which they had to divvy out 2.2 million dollars.
With all this information at the forefront, Frontier Airlines could be moving to the chat-based only scene in their attempt to make it harder for customers to respond to wanting a refund or to reschedule flights. This was attempted once before though DOT put a stop to it.
This change was originally attempted by Frontier Airlines to change their policy on rescheduling refunds due to unforeseen events, and certain circumstances. The DOT wants to ensure that Airlines are following properly affordable, reliable, and safe transportation guidelines for all customers.
Reliability means that we get on our plane and leave at the designated time. Another major aspect it ensures that we will not get a creative request for these refunds.
By using an automated system, Frontier Airlines will now have a better way to avoid people contacting them. Time will tell if it works out for the customer or is just a way to offload certain headaches for the airline.
