This summer I got stuck at the airport with a delayed KLM flight. The plane to fly on a Sunday afternoon, had to wait for a mechanical part coming from the Netherlands in the evening. So we could only fly on the next, Monday, morning. Because I was stranded in Lisbon, home town, I did not need the “complimentary” hotel or meal.
Enraged by the delay and missing a meeting on Monday morning, I checked the Customer Care Policies of KLM to see if I was entitled to any compensation. This is what I found:
passengers will be offered free of charge:
- meals/refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting
time
- hotel accommodation in cases where an (additional) overnight
stay becomes necessary (transport included)
- 2 telephone calls, fax messages or e-mails.
The item that merits comment is the 2 phone calls. I wonder what is the rationale to this. In cop movies, suspects have the right to make one phone when they are thrown into jail. KLM treats its costumers with only one more degree of generosity.
P.S. It turns out that if you don’t take the hotel, the (reasonable) meal or the 2 emails, you get nothing.
