Positive Externality

Flying on the JetBlue AYCJ pass for the past two years has been one of the best experiences of my life.  Last year I flew on 27 flights over the course of the pass.  This year I flew 25,000 miles on 18 flights and had just as much fun.  My trip is documented here and I’ve been at the top of the Flymodo leaderboard for a while.  After last year’s pass I was a JetBlue fanatic (after experiencing absolutely no issues) and JetBlue was always my first choice thenceforth for regular flights.  Ever since the pass ended last year, I was looking forward to JetBlue offering the pass again – and sure enough they did!

Despite all this, experiences with JetBlue at the beginning and the end of my pass this year have produced serious misgivings about JetBlue as a company and their ability to competently manage customer data, so much so that I’ll unfortunately be actively avoiding JetBlue for “regular flights” outside of the AYCJ pass.

Problems with JetBlue began my first day on September 7th when my first flight from Rochester to JFK was delayed over 4 hours due to a mechanical problem (non-weather delay, entirely JetBlue’s fault).  That day I was supposed to fly to Phoenix, and then back from Phoenix to JFK on a red-eye the very next day.  Due to the delay, I was going to miss my connection to Phoenix and as a result there was no way I would even be able to go to Phoenix.  The gate agent assisting all the displaced customers was very kind and graciously offered to switch my flight to an early flight to Las Vegas instead, and then back from Las Vegas later that night (to be clear: changing my destination from Phoenix to Las Vegas).  She even set me up with a hotel in JFK, saying that she would forward my information to JFK and once I arrived in JFK I should talk to a representative to get the hotel voucher.  I warned her to make sure my original Phoenix flights were canceled, otherwise I’d be penalized with a $100 no-show fee for AYCJ.  She handed me a boarding pass for my morning JFK -> LAS flight.

I eventually got to JFK on the 4-hour delayed flight, though upon talking to a rather rude representative in Terminal 5 it was clear the gate agent never forwarded the information.  I had to fight my way to get the hotel I was promised back in Rochester airport.  That night I checked the All You Can Jet page and saw all of my original flights (including Phoenix), with nothing about Las Vegas, despite having a boarding pass in my hand.  The next morning before my flight I called JetBlue and after literally 40 minutes on the phone with a rather unhelpful representative, she told me that I did *not* have a ticket for the flight that I literally had just boarded (continued talking to her right up until the plane door closed), and that no reservation existed for my flight from Las Vegas back to JFK.

Once I got in Las Vegas I realized that my confirmation number for coming back to JFK now had two flights on it: PHX -> JFK, and LAS -> JFK, which is absurd – two obviously-conflicting flights on the same confirmation number.  I called again to try to sort this all out, and after 90 more minutes on the phone and talking with three people (including what was a “supervisor” at All-You-Can-Jet), I was told some mix-up had been made and that the original gate agent should not have changed my flight.  I learned that the boarding pass I was originally handed was not a confirmed ticket but something akin to a standby passenger boarding pass.  My Phoenix flights also remained, which the phone representative told me would be taken care of.  The woman who was a “supervisor” and AYCJ assured me that my pass would be fine and I would not be incurred a no-show fee.  At this point, after wasting over 2 hours of my valuable time at Las Vegas (where I had little time to begin with) sorting out a colossal mix-up on JetBlue’s end, I thought everything was fine.  But it was not meant to be.

A few days later when I ended up in San Francisco (days after the originally-booked Phoenix flights), I got an e-mail notice informing me that I had no-showed for one of my flights and that my All-You-Can-Jet pass was canceled (!!).  So much for being assured, twice, my pass would be fine.  I got back on the phone and after close to two hours of waiting and being passed between multiple people (including one dropped call), I finally was assured once again that the mix-up was resolved and that my pass was re-activated (despite the website not saying so).  Apparently even though my Phoenix flights were canceled in the main reservation system, they remained in some separate queue that staff manually examined for missed-flights (wow), which was why it took them 2 days to even notice I “didn’t show” for the the Phoenix flight I was never supposed to be on to begin with.  Within two hours, the website finally showed my pass as being reactivated and I thankfully was able to check in at SFO to my flight.

This entire episode is entirely unacceptable and shows a colossal failure on JetBlue’s end at a number of levels:
1. The gate agent did not properly book my hotel.
2. The gate agent did not properly ticket my outgoing flight.
3. The gate agent did not properly cancel my Phoenix flights (though this apparently would still have caused the no-show problem since that queue is “separate”).
4. The gate agent assured me that my AYCJ pass would be fine with respect to no-show fees, which was not the case.
6. The gate agent left no notes about any of this, which caused other problems down the line as I tried to explain the situation to other agents.
7. The All-You-Can-Jet supervisor on the phone assured me my AYCJ pass would be fine with respect to no-show fees, which was not the case.
8. At one point, my confirmation number had two obviously-conflicting flights (PHX->JFK, LAS->JFK) occuring at the same time.
9. The agent I spoke to originally on the phone as of no help except telling me that I did not have a ticket for a flight I had literally just boarded (later learned the boarding pass was not from a ticked reservation per #2).
10. My AYCJ pass was canceled for a no-show on flights that shouldn’t have even existed to begin with.
11. Most frustrating of all: I spent a total of over four hours my time on the phone and four hours in cell phone minutes resolving problems that should have taken no more of 15 minutes of my time (and problems that should never have occurred to begin with).  Had these problems surfaced at less convenient times I may have even not been able to check into flights due to the pass cancellation mistake.

Although I was a little rattled by this experience, I was happy that everything was resolved (though warned my fellow AYCJ-ers on Twitter to not let a gate agent change flights) and went on 15 more flights on a total of 23,000 miles without problem and had a great time most of the month.

While in San Diego, my last destination, I got an automated phone message that my final AYCJ flight from San Diego to Rochester had been canceled due to weather.  I suspect this was probably due to a delay of the incoming flight combined with hefty departure fees SAN airport charges after 11:30PM due to noise issues at the airport.  I called in to rebook travel, and after waiting on the phone for over an hour (in part due to the need to transfer me to the “AYCJ Department”) an AYCJ representative  told me there was no other way they could re-route me to Rochester that day and that – contrary to any indication of such on the so-called “Customer Bill of Rights” – I was unable to get a refund (fair enough) or voucher for a future flight (not fair enough) because All-You-Can-Jet flights have “zero cash value”.

JetBlue’s “Customer Bill of Rights” is listed here:
http://www.jetblue.com/about/ourcompany/promise/index.html

Under the “Cancellations” section, this states: “All customers whose flight is canceled by JetBlue will, at the customer’s option, receive a full refund or reaccommodation [sic] on the next available JetBlue flight at no additional charge or fare.”

I certainly didn’t have much of an option.

The agent on the phone mentioned that JetBlue does have an agreement with American Airlines, but that only agents at the airport can make the decision to re-route on another airline.  Well, San Diego Airport has a very small JetBlue presence with only a few flights a day.  I certainly was not going to take public transit to the airport unnecessarily early and risk not being able to get flight on another airline later that night when JetBlue agents at SAN airport became available.  Since JetBlue was unable to accommodate me, I had to spend $250 (luckily a very cheap amount given it was a same-day flight) on a separate United Airlines flight back to Rochester.  This really wasn’t a huge deal to me, but I don’t find JetBlue’s policy as stated by the phone agent to be consistent with the Bill of Rights.

These mishaps leave me with a general feeling of incompetence about JetBlue as a company that does nothing but increase the uncertainty cost to me of flying them again by choice.  Outlining this and other problems I’ve encountered throughout the month:

Technical Imcompetence:

1. For at least two months, JetBlue’s website has not worked in Google Chrome for making a reservation (just hangs at the intersitial page).  That a company of this size doesn’t bother to test their application in Chrome is ridiculous, though sadly not that surprising given their competitors’ crapping websites.

2. When JetBlue announced the first day to book flights on the AYCJ pass, they told us to watch http://www.jetblue.com/aycj for a link to book flights.  The day before this was done, one could view the HTML source code of the page and find the link right there in plain text – just commented out via HTML.  Not only was the link there, but the target of the link (http://aycj.jetblue.com/) appeared live and well, way before the booking window.  Though I didn’t do so to abide by the rules, I could have easily booked flights before the opening window.  Apparently JetBlue’s application deployment methodology is to uncomment some lines in their HTML source code.  Is some teenager running their website?

Data Management Incompetence:

1. The day JetBlue allowed folks to book flights on the pass, there was an uproar over certain cities not being available for booking.  While it didn’t affect me, that was just silly.

2. JetBlue’s management of AYCJ flights seems completely separate from their normal flight reservation system.  Flights booked through AYCJ are copied/registered on the main booking site, but that’s where the connection stops.  This lead to my confirmation number having two obviously-conflicting flights and having my pass falsely canceled despite being assured to the contrary by two different JetBlue representatives.

3. JetBlue appears to have staff manually checking some queue to check if customers have missed their flights.  Really guys – this isn’t automated?

Representative Incompetence:

1. As previously described in my story, gate agents are clearly not trained enough to know what is or is not possible regarding accomodating flight delays and missed connections, at least when it comes to AYCJ.  In my case this incompetence costed me over 4 hours of wasted time trying to track down and resolve the problem over multiple phone calls (see “Customer Service Incompetence”).

2. From what I can tell, JetBlue has poor resource allocation in place for customer service representatives.  During normal times, staffing appears adequate – but just wait until some weather comes up or some other systemic problem hits customers.  Waiting in line for hours to reach customer service and dropping phone calls (as has happened to me four times with JetBlue today) reflects a collosal disrespect for customers’ opportunity cost of time.

3. Due to AYCJ being in a “different department”, any call relating to AYCJ (even inquiring about a simple flight) involves transferring the call to AYCJ.  Not only does doing so place you in another long queue (sometimes longer than the original one), but this actually forces the original agent to wait with you (!!).  It can’t even imagine how many hours JetBlue pays agents to wait on the phone with customers reaching other departments they’re trying to transfer to; utter waste.  I even asked during one of these sessions if I could be called back so as not to waste my valuable time or cell phone minutes, and no – they have no mechanism for stopping their call queue if the customer hangs up.

Misleading Bill of Rights:

JetBlue’s Customer Bill of Rights states: “All customers whose flight is cancelled by JetBlue will, *at the customer’s option*, receive a full refund or reaccommodation on the next available JetBlue flight at no additional charge or fare”.  Taken literally, *this statement is false for flights booked on the AYCJ flight*, that is unless you consider a “full refund” to be “$0″.  JetBlue will try to find an alternate flight for you.  In my case, no alternate flight was available or the day I had to be back in Rochester, and employee #10065 “Travis” claimed that all AYCJ flights have “zero cash value”, and so no refund or flight voucher can be issued.  I can perhaps see no refund being an option (though even if so, this should clearly stated as an exception in the Bill of Rights) since the question of “cash value” isn’t easy to answer, but at the very least they should offer a flight voucher.  After all, even without a flight voucher I’m taking up one of their flights (perhaps more “valuable” than my original one) if they have to re-book me.  Instead I spent $250 out-of-pocket on a different airline to compensate myself for this canceled flight.

Despite enjoying the actual flying experience on JetBlue and being overall extremely satisfied with the tremendous value the AYCJ pass provides, these problems have forced me to waste my valuable time correcting problems that JetBlue should never have had, and cost me $250 for a replacement of a canceled flight for which no compensation was offered,  counter to JetBlue’s own “Customer Bill of Rights”.  With so many positives about JetBlue, these problems are an unfortunate scar on an airline I would otherwise love to support.  Though I’d do the AYCJ pass again in a heartbeat, I’m ashamed to say that I’ll be actively avoiding JetBlue on my “regular” flights for the time being, due to the uncertainty cost further problems or time waste originating in JetBlue’s organizational incompetence.

I realize that the problems I’ve encountered are probably rare, and it seems JetBlue customers overall have excellent experience, particularly on the All-You-Can-Jet pass.  I wouldn’t necessarily dissuade anyone from flying JetBlue, but this recent experience gives me reservations about doing so.

UPDATE

As if the evidence collected that AYCJ is a total data hack-job isn’t already enough, it looks like JetBlue has just suspended my AYCJ pass for no-showing to my flight that they canceled. Glad I have no more flights so I don’t have to spend another 2 hours on the phone resolving such a ridiculous issue.  Good riddance, JetBlue.

This will be the first in a series of articles which I preface with “The High Cost of” and the line of discussion is meant to stimulate thinking about the true costs of various things in real life. One of the most interesting concentrations in economics is cost-benefit analysis – not necessarily the formal methods of applying it, but the more abstract way of deciding which costs and benefits should be quantified.

One of the most overlooked costs in policy decisions seems to be the aggregate time loss spread across thousands or millions of citizens, even though each citizen incurs a low cost on an individual level. The tendency to not consider low-in-amount but widespread costs is a more widespread issue that many people do not properly analyze in policy decisions. Economists can point to the natural breadth asymmetry of costs and benefits in globalization/free-trade as a perfect example of this.

Road work is a great example of an action by the government that causes relatively small losses in time by citizens – but spread across a large number of citizens. The policy question that I’d like to put forth, and a question I think rarely gets properly analyzed, is what accommodations road work should provide to the public to reduce the burden of their lost time from congestion (this doesn’t even consider the statistical cost of increased accident rates as a result of the congestion, which could be a high cost in and of itself).

What bothers me about this and related issues is that people seem to be overly complacent with the status-quo without even stopping to consider that the status-quo may be grossly inefficient. A necessary trade-off for improving our roads is one thing, but an inefficient allocation of resources related to it is quite another. As an amateur economist it is in my interest to ensure scarce resources are being optimally allocated as best as possible to squeeze every ounce of efficiency out of what we have to work with.

The trade-off at stake here is this: Ultimately the government has a decision as to when to perform road work. To simplify matters, lets consider a model with only two times: day, and night. During the day the government has to pay a labor rate of w-day and at night a labor rate of w-night, where w-night > w-day, perhaps by a large amount. Whenever I start in on this issue discussing it with someone else they immediately point out “but construction works can’t work at night – you are being impractical!”. My response is that you can never categorically dismiss something like that – there is a price to everything, and there is certainly a price (a high one) on paying construction workers to work at an inconvenient time.

Clearly doing road work at night would cause significantly less congestion on the road, yet the differential in doing this is w-night minus w-day. The policy question here is whether or not the cost of lost time measured across the predicted population affected is more than or less than the wage differential between day and night time labor work.

I keep referring to “cost of time”, yet many non-economists do not even accept that this concept exists, which I find absurd. Time is, in fact, one of society’s most valuable resources. To pose this issue in a more practical manner, consider that you are faced with two decisions given that you are stuck in traffic for an estimated hour due to road work in the morning:

1. Wait in traffic for the hour and pay nothing. Get to work an hour later.

2. Pay $5 to have your car teleported around the traffic jam and back into regular traffic, saving you an hour.

That $5 is essentially the value of one our of your time at that particular moment. The marginal value of time depends a lot on the time of day and what your current situation is. The fact is that some very successful people would pay $50 to save one hour in the morning, others would barely pay $1. But the concept of time and the theoretical ability to compensate people for lost time shows that the concept exists and is very real.

I’m not a full-time economist and if I was I’d do more research into this interesting topic (well.. interesting to me!), but my intuition tells me that if a full cost-benefit analysis were conducted in the manner of reasoning that I have outlined above with such projects, significantly more road work would be done at a higher cost to the government and tax payers, but a net lower cost once the lost time value is factored in. In other words, we citizens should be less bothered by road work!

This is the kind of stuff that the government needs to be doing on a regular and rigorous basis to ensure that resources are being optimally allocated. Non-thinking or making assumptions about what is possible or reasonable without critically analyzing the situation is a disservice by the government to taxpayers.