A message in praise sent to Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, Executive Vice President / Chief Human Resources Officer and Communications Officer at Air Canada
Dear Arielle –
I am writing in high praise of your Air Canada customer service representative Ashir. He wholly saved four people who were trapped in Istanbul on the morning of August 30th, including me.
My mother (who is in the middle of chemo!) and I along with two men were returning home from a Regent cruise through Greece and Turkey. Our travel was booked through Regent Cruises. When we arrived at the Turkish Airlines desk, Turkish Airlines claimed they could not process our reservations. The business class seats were booked in our names, but as there were no matching ‘reservation’ entries, we could not pass their security check. Turkish Airlines refused to call Air Canada. Turkish Airlines coldly told us it was our problem to fix. Luckily, out of us four, I had a working phone, or we would have been wholly stuck.
I called Regent Cruises. Their answering machine said to leave a message and they would call us back quickly. They never did.
I didn’t wait for them (thankfully). I moved right on to calling Air Canada at 11:06pm EST / 6:06am Istanbul time. Your phone system was quick and efficient, and in moments I was talking with Ashir. He became our lifeline to sanity.
Ashir did his very best to talk to the Turkish Airlines team. Turkish Airlines absolutely refused to budge. Turkish Airlines said everything that was wrong was Air Canada’s fault. Ashir tried to point out to them a number of times that all records were set up properly in the Air Canada system. Ashir even tried recreating the tickets. Turkish Airlines was hostile and half the time refused to even double-check. Finally, Ashir had to give up on them. He rebooked me on an Air France flight through Paris. That set up perfectly. While I was trying to access the email he sent me, I think I accidentally disconnected us. That was at 1 hour 10 minutes. I nearly panicked.
Ashir called me right back. He finished my reservation and moved on to my mother. He tried a number of options for her, but options for her to get back to Tampa Florida were very convoluted with very long layovers. And somehow she disconnected the phone at 22 minutes in.
Again Ashir called us right back. My mother and the other two men agreed they would just fly to Miami to get out of Turkey. They could take an Uber the 4 hours home from there. Our primary drive at this point was to get out of Turkey as quickly as possible. Ashir set it all up. He got all three of them direct flights to Miami. That took another 46 minutes, and we were wholly set, ticket IDs in hand. Our boarding passes were easily printed without any problems at all, and we escaped Turkey.
I cannot even begin to express how panicked we were at the Turkish Airlines counter when Turkish Airlines refused to help us. Ashir was an absolute lifeline. He did his very best to sort things out with Turkish Airlines, but once he realized how non-communicative they were being, he moved on to focusing on rescuing us. Ashir went above and beyond to ensure we made it out of Turkey to safety.
Is there a way I can make sure Ashir is recognized for his amazing work as a customer service rep and as a compassionate human being? Is there an office address I can send boxes of chocolates to?
Sincerely,
Lisa Shea
Owner, BellaOnline.com