GregValiquette.com

It’s a funny thing about customer recognition. When it goes well, it’s a great tool to reward and incent your clients. It can be a very double-edged sword as well if things don’t go as planned. We have been stuck in a couple months of limbo with Air Canada / Aeroplan and it hasn’t been a very pleasant experience.

For the last decade or so, my wife and I have been solid collectors of Air Canada’s Aeroplan program (and their Star Alliance partners). It’s worked well for us and has been beneficial to Air Canada as we have switched airlines, flown different routes and even specifically taken trips just to increase our mileage and status with Star Alliance. We literally NEVER fly outside of Star Alliance for this reason.

In return, we have had Aeroplan Elite (Star Alliance Gold) status for the last few years which makes life much more pleasant at airports with check-ins, lounges, etc. So far, so good, right?

Well this past year, with a child on the way, my wife (Clarissa Valiquette) and I have flown a little less, but my wife managed to collect 34,400 Aeroplan miles (600 or 1.7 percent shy of the required total). In addition, she met all other program criteria including flying enough of those miles on AC, etc. What makes this even tougher is that my wife actually flew enough miles but was unable to get AC miles on one flight due to her company booking a fare that didn’t qualify (Jul 26 - AC605) and another flight being rerouted to a shorter series of flights due to weather, the difference of which would have made up 500 of the 600 miles (March 1 - AC905 instead of UA795 / UA7133).

Now, as many of you would note, my wife did not reach the cut-off and offering my wife status would require a small amount of goodwill from Air Canada which I agree is completely at their discretion.

Putting aside the mileage issue, here’s where the Top Tier Customer Service goes a bit sideways. For the last two months, my wife has attempted to reach out to AC just to explain the issue and see if anyone could review her case and at least offer an answer relevant to her case.

A quick search at FlyerTalk.com suggests that lots of people who are close to the mileage thresholds often do get upgraded in similar circumstances.

We were told on the phone that someone would respond to us in writing prior to the March 1 program deadline, but to this point, the only response we received was on Feb 3rd stating that she fell short of the 35,000 miles and that this was the cutoff for Elite status. She replied to mention specifics of her situation but did not get a reply and still hasn’t.

In a follow-up phone call, an Aeroplan agent said someone would be in touch, this still hasn’t happened. Air Canada has said that they can’t provide any info as Aeroplan is managed separately and they can’t influence a decision. The crux of my argument is that this program is set in place to reward customers who go out of their way to show loyalty to a brand. Whether or not the decision is made to offer status or not is almost besides the point. It is just very difficult to not be able to contact anyone or have any recognition of our situation. At this point, it has led my wife and I to look at other airline programs and rethink the blind loyalty we have shown when it doesn’t seem to be reciprocated.

Oh well, I know this probably sounds like sour grapes… it’s not meant to. It’s just clear how one small point of customer engagement (a phone call, a personal e-mail) could work to salvage a customer relationship that was/is worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Who knows, maybe someone from AC/Aeroplan will see this…

cheers,
Greg

Wow! It’s amazing how many busy days go into launching a new product. I am in charge of marketing and business development for KidStarter, a Windows desktop replacement for kids aged 3-8.

Every day it means conquering some new facet of marketing (SEO, Retail Sales, Online Delivery, etc.), but it certainly keeps the days fresh and exciting!

Feel free to drop by KidStarter.com and download a free trial copy.

Exciting times right now… I’m one of the partners of Brilliant Software and we are about to publicly release our first software!

KidStarter is a program aimed at kids aged 3-9 which makes using any Windows computer safe, secure and easy-to-use.

After months of work, the software is finally ready and I’m excited about doing my part and bringing the product to market.

You can learn more about the software and also download a free trial copy at KidStarter.com

Wow, so I was in Spain a couple of weeks ago lying in a hotel bed watching the BBC World Service and guess what came on?!?!

BBC’s programme Click had a feature all about iStopOver.com, the site I’ve been working on for about 6 months. It’s unbelievable how much traffic we got from that exposure. It’s also really gratifying to see a big site like that comment on how cool your project is!

Anyhow… check out the site! It’s pretty cool and I just gave it a total design overhaul, so it’s really in top form.

So as part of a new year and new challenges, I’m knee-deep learning a new language. In this case I’m talking about a programming language, Ruby on Rails. As part of my desire to be more hands-on with technology, I’m excited about actively improving my skills, and the chance to learn a new language is certainly part of that.

But as with so many things, what seems good on paper is a bit of a nightmare in real life. I’m getting by fine in Rails, but it’s just so frustrating to try to do something you already know how to do in PHP or ASP and have to spend time totally re-learning something basic.

While there’s moments that I’d just like to scream, I’m still very happy about feeling like I’m stretching the bounds of my knowledge… it’s been a while and it’s quite fulfilling.

Well, it’s that time of year again to make resolutions, take stock of everything and prepare for another year.

This year, like many others, I’m going to really try not to spend time/effort/money on things I don’t need. A little belt-tightening (both physical and financial) seems like it’s long been in order and I’m actually looking forward to living life with a little more control and forethought.

I recently started a new job and I’m really excited about the new year being entirely different than the one before it. I’m already working everyday on hands-on projects and for the first time in a long time, I can actually see the results of a day’s work when I go home.

So, although it doesn’t seem like a time for optimism on a large scale, I’m going into this year feeling positive, excited about the future and happier than I’ve been in quite a long time.

cheers all, and happy new year!

So I finally got around to integrating a blog into my main website at gregvaliquette.com. Basically, I just wrote a custom ActionScript front-end to display posts directly from my installation of WordPress.

Everything basically works now. Still going to play around a little bit to get inline photos and some extra CSS formatting working, but otherwise the site is up and ready to go.

Well, we’re through another election. I’ve got to say that tonight makes me feel really depressed for my country and our collective future. First of all, we set a new low in voter turnout. I really believe that we need to enact laws that make voting a responsibility, not just a privilege. It doesn’t matter to me what party you vote for, or even if you go out and strike your ballot in protest… but the thought that a full 40% of people in the country couldn’t even be bothered to get off the couch and go vote… well, it makes me very sorry for our future.

Not that I’m happy we had to vote at all. I can’t believe that our Conservative government broke election law and called an early election purely out of political opportunism. Naively, I assumed that electoral law should be controlled by a body that could not be affected by the ruling party. After $300 million spent on nothing, the conservatives managed to gain absolutely nothing!! Nothing whatsoever… but across the country, our elected officials abstained from their day-to-day duties and instead were out attempting to gather votes for the 3rd time in 4 years! I would sure love to see someone hold Stephen Harper to task for this frivolity. Kind of like if you file a nuissance lawsuit, you can be forced to pay court costs… seems apt in this situation.

The other thing is the conservative gain in power. What makes me sad isn’t really that the Conservatives won a few seats, or that the Liberals lost a few seats. The thing that made me sad is that Stephane Dion actually stood up and told Canadians that they would have to make some small sacrifices in order to make long-term positive changes for the environment. It was a rare example of a potential leader forsaking the easy voting promises of low taxes and placating solutions and instead offering a real plan for change and a real funding mechanism to make it happen.

The depressing part is that it makes me think less of people to think that everyone is “green” when they can do something superficial or offer an opinion, but no one actually wants to accept some minor inconveniences that are going to be inevitable if we are really to make change. And this argument doesn’t just hold to the environment. If we look at the American election situation, we’ve got people talking about bailouts and billions (if not trillions) of dollars while both candidates talk about reducing taxes and reducing burdens on citizens. Why is it that people can’t seem to equate paying your fair share in taxes with the services that we all require from government.

Anyhow, I just think that if everyone could be just a little bit more realistic and stop accepting easy answers, our society might just make progress. Oh well… like I said, it’s been a bit of a depressing evening.