Comment by ornornor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ornornor | Hacker News Reader

Patagonia is amazing. They’ve fixed a winter jacket for me for free that had a hole melted in it from a bicycle light. The light turned itself on in my pocket and became so hot within minutes that it melted a hole. Patagonia did a top notch fix (it’s invisible), provided and prepaid label to send the jacket, paid for return shipping, and did the repair for free. Even though it was 100% not their fault. The company making the light on the other hand did nothing to help at all and refuses to add a warning in the instructions that the light gets hot enough to burn your hand or melt your jacket.

The absolute worst service and customer service I ever received in my life was Turkish airlines, by far. They kept canceling our flights, were extremely rude and unprofessional shouting at us in Turkish, giving no directions or information to the hundreds of people affected, no one spoke English, they left us stranded in the terminal, then offered the crappiest hotel I’ve had the displeasure of staying at, provided meal vouchers that weren’t accepted anywhere, lied to us all the way, had a line at the airport 3h long to talk to them, rebooked us on red eye flights without even asking, and refuses to this day to pay the compensation we’re entitled to following the cancelations. After this little adventure, i looked up reviews and it seems like this is just another day for Turkish airlines: hundreds of reviews describing what we went through. I will never set foot on a TK flight ever again and tell anyone who will listen to avoid Turkish airlines like the plague unless they like pain and arriving several days late.

I'll second Patagonia. I have a zip-up sweater of theirs that was around a decade old that still looked brand new despite wearing it at least once a week and I got the zipper stuck in something and it broke. They replaced the zipper no cost, no problems, free shipping.

> I will never set foot on a TK flight ever again and tell anyone who will listen to avoid Turkish airlines like the plague unless they like pain and arriving several days late.

How low have they fallen since their publicity department was praised by John Cleese at the 1989 Academy Awards.

They still say they’re “Europe’s #1 airline”, but look up reviews from ordinary travelers and you find hundreds of them describing a special kind of hell at IST.

> were extremely rude and unprofessional shouting at us... giving no directions or information to the hundreds of people affected... they left us stranded in the terminal

First time dealing with Turkish port authorities? They do this to their own people. Try getting a car on a boat in Alanya. You will go on a mad goose paper chase: Person A will make you wait half an hour in their queue (with mandatory coffee breaks), to then tell you that you need a paper from person B. Person B is nowhere to be found, or on their coffee break, but person C says they might be in building X. No one in building X has ever heard of person B, and who the hell are you anyway for asking, go back to the terminal. Meanwhile your car is blocking other cars from leaving the boat, and there's nothing you can do because Person D needs to see that paper before you move it. People are getting stressed. An angry traveller knows person B from the village, and goes into Building X and drags him into the street so that he can give you your damn paper, but person B doesn't know what you're talking about and sends you back to person A. Person A is pissed off, and writes something on a piece of paper, and sends you to Person C. Person C, reads the paper, writes something else on the paper, and tells you to give it to Person A. Person A reads the scrap of paper, and then writes nothing but your number plate on a square piece of paper, and tells you to give it to person D, who barely glances at it and lets you go to your car.

Moral: next time, have your number plate scrawled lazily on a postit note and wave it vaguely at the guy at the fence, like everyone else does to bypass the bureaucratic hell that is the turkish port authority.

Border police was its own kind of jerks which okay I guess, not like my expectations were very high.

But here I was talking about the TK staff. The airline “service” reps. They were the rude and unprofessional ones I’m talking about. I have yet to hear “sorry” for the 36h delay and I had the pleasure of interacting with 20–30 TK staff at the airport during this ordeal.

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