Hawaiian Airlines No Help!

Hawaiian Air

Hawaiian Air Customer Service Debacle

Hawaiian Airlines was our choice for inter-island travel this past trip to go from Oahu to Kailua-Kona as we have traveled Go! in the past and it was NOT so great (lost baggage, delays, etc etc). Plus they had the lowed inter-island baggage fees.

Although we were please overall with the quick flight, we were not so happy with the way they didn't help us with my wife Jenivee forgetting her phone on the plane.

So here is the story:

A couple of weeks ago, while flying from Oahu (HNL) Hawaii to Kailua-Kona (KON) Hawaii airport on Hawaii Airlines, my wife, Jenivee, forgot her phone in the seat pocket on the airplane when we deboarded. The turn around time on reboarding and take off is pretty quick on these inter-island flights and by the time she noticed, they had already shut the cabin doors.

Now here comes the dis on Hawaiin Airlines part.  So even though the plane was still right there, and they could have easily radioed to the pilot or crew or staff to check the pocket and simply put the phone in lost and found when they arrived back to Oahu, the Hawaiian Airline agent said it happens so often they just don't bother with it anymore. She told my wife to just wait a day or two and see *IF* someone turns it in. She gave Jenivee a general Hawaiian Airlines phone number to call and see if it showed up. Well, this seemed a bit crazy. And sure enough, after calling every day for the next two days and then on our return out of Oahu (HNL) airport physically going to the lost and found for both Hawaiian and the airport and calling all the possible lost and found locations the plane flew (Maui, Kauai, Kona, etc.) We finally got a pretty good picture of what probably happened.

Obviously, Hawaiian airlines made absolutely no effort to help us out even though it would have been extremely easy. That is the main point here. But generally, the lost and found system is not very organized. Every time we called we got a different story on how things worked. But we think that *usually* things end up back in Honolulu after a few days if someone turns something in and it isn't claimed at whatever airport it ended up at. However, if someone turns something in at the airport terminal lost and found and not the airline's, it is a different story, but we called all of those as well. Also, in short, most everyone we talked to said it was a pretty well known fact that any smart phone was not going to show up again. If you can't get the airline to immediately pull it off the plane you were on (which Hawaiian could have done with minimal effort and to our great pleasure) then you may as well have dropped it on the ground in the middle of a black market trade show in Romania. This is not to say there are not honest people out there, but statistically, it appears somewhere along the way, either the person finding the phone or someone at one of the possible links of sending it back to somewhere through the lost and found systems, it gets re-routed to someone who wants a free smart phone.

Also, given that Jenivee did not have any locks or owner info on screen on her Android phone like I do on mine, it would be very simple to reset the phone to factory settings, stick in a new sim card, and away we go! We also had a 8gb Micro SD card in it with about a years worth of photos (really the only *valuable* thing on the phone other than the phone and card itself) that had not been backed up.

So it was gone. And Hawaiian could care less. And although I technically agree they had no direct responsibility to do so, it is like walking into a for-profit hospital with your arm freshly chopped off, bleeding to death, and they ask for a form of payment first and without one, they watch you bleed out. It is like watching someone get mugged and not doing anything, not calling the cops, not reacting, because you don't want to get involved, even though you have your cell phone out and 911 is hot linked to your #1 key.... The indifference that Hawaiian showed in a case that would have been very easy and nearly costless to remedy made us not too happy. Especially my wife.

In short, she lost her phone and now we needed to replace it. (Read more on how that went)




CachedSince:{ts '2024-12-30 09:55:30'}