Southwest,
If only you lived up to your mission that talks about having the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit. I have flown southwest and been a customer several times. However, this morning I did not fly southwest. I happened to be flying on an airline whose check in counter was right next to southwest's. The airline that I was flying on did not provide bags for the carseat that I was traveling with so I asked one of your "friendly" check in employees at the Ontario Airport in California if he had a bag that I could use. He replied in a very rude manner, "Are you flying with us? If not, then I can't give you a bag." A fifteen cent bag. I didn't realize that southwest was in such financial difficulty that they couldn't spare a fifteen cent bag. I used to fly southwest airlines. I used to think that they were a fun and friendly airline. Based on my experience this morning, I don't think that I'll ever fly southwest again. Who wants to be the patron of an airline who treats others so rudely? Not me.

Hi Stephen,
I am sorry to hear of your experience in Ontario, and if our folks were rude, that would certainly be out of character. I am curious as to why you aren't upset with the airline upon which you flew since they apparently provide fewer ammenities to their Customers than we do. Have you considered this? Our stations get a limited supply of those bags, and we want to make sure that we have them available when our Customers need them--it would be a disservice to our Customers if we ran out. How would you have felt when you flew with us if we had run out of the bags by giving them to another airline's passengers? It's not a question of cost, but availabity.

As to a complaint section on our web site, I'm not sure if you mean southwest.com or this blog. If you will read the blog's User Guide (the link is under the airplane on the upper right), the blogs purpose is to have a dialogue with our Customers, and it isn't set up to handle individual Customer Service concerns. We are working toward being able to handle these electronically, but we don't have a firm timeline. In the meantime, our Customer Relations Department wants to hear all of our Customer concerns, and their contact information is in the User Guide.

Your patronage is important to us, and I hope this one incident won't keep you from flying with us.

Brian

Sorry to continue the threadjack, but . . .

Brian: tell your bosses NOT to have a "complaint section" of southwest.com or handle issues by e-mail. If it's not worth reporting via snail-mail, it's not worth reporting.

In fact, I'd have no problem with you bloggers instituting a "no unrelated gripe zone" here on the blogs. If there's a post about when schedules will be available and folks want to comment/grouse about that, go for it. But this shouldn't be a place for moaning and groaning about unrelated incidents that couldn't better be served as you have done so until now.

(I know I complained about the lack of West Coast flights from BWI, but it was in a thread so related.)

Just my security fee's worth,
Paul
(Working on a nickname for here)

Captain Evans --
What a great post with a lot of positive energy! I'm sorry that it got derailed by someone with a lot of negative energy, but maybe considering that it is Independence Day, it is okay that Mr. Badger has the freedom of speech to express his opinion.

Thanks for the largely unsung job that y'all in the "front office" of all of the Southwest 737s do, day in and day out, consistently, professionally and conscientiously. Each one of you are a true asset to the Company and make it a pleasure for us to fly with you!
Kim
External Blog Boy :)

Mr. Badger,
I will echo my fellow bloggers' comments in regretting that you had an experience that did not live up to your expectations of the outstanding Employees of Southwest Airlines. After more than 34 years' worth of experiences of my own, though, I will gladly state that NO other airline or set of people can come close to being what Southwest is. I would hope that the reluctance of one person to give you something does not convince you to avoid Southwest Airlines from now on. Whether he should or shouldn't have given you the bag, it just doesn't seem right to judge 33,000 people and their AWESOME service every day on the actions of one of them.

Please give Southwest another chance to show you that they really do LUV you!
Kim
External Blog Boy :)

Dave, great comments about freedom and everything but what I was really wondering about was whether it's harder for planes to take off in really hot weather, like 112 degrees, which is what it's supposed to be on Monday when I fly to Las Vegas.
Thanks
jg