Conscientious Employee Can Make All the Difference

After last week’s column, recounting a Granada Hills teenager’s two-month struggle to retrieve baggage lost on a Greyhound bus, I heard from a woman whose misplaced purse set in motion a much different series of events.

It took The Times’ inquiry to get Greyhound to return Erin McDuff’s baggage 68 days after it was lost. Even then, it arrived at Erin’s home without the more than $80 she had left in the bag.

Jean Stein, a Los Angeles resident, called me after reading about that, eager to give credit to a Miami employee of Alamo Rent A Car named Eduardo Carrion, who had been so helpful to her.

Stein feared she was out $576.33 in cash and her airline tickets home from a Sept. 24 Miami wedding, after she left her purse under the front seat of an Alamo car rented by her nephew. When he turned the car in, he simply forgot the purse.

But when she called Alamo the next day, Carrion--the man in charge of lost and found--said he had every penny of her money, as well as her tickets. That very day, cash and tickets were back in Stein’s hands.

We’re in an era when customer service seems a fading virtue. But good service does exist, and it’s worth reporting.

With Stein, everything seems to have worked out perfectly. As soon as she reached Carrion, he was able to confirm her identity by checking with her the information on the driver’s license he had found in her purse. And when she told him she had left $576 cash in the purse, he immediately said, “and 33 cents.”

I called him at his office. Carrion has worked for Alamo for 10 years.

Monique Kennedy, Alamo’s Miami manager, said proudly, “We have such a good lost and found policy. We hold everything in a secluded place. We made Eddie responsible for contacting every customer, and following up if necessary. . . . We know how good he’s been. So we’re not surprised we have a lot of happy customers.”

Here, in short, an able, conscientious employee was assigned a vital customer service job. Now, Alamo is reaping the benefits.

Meanwhile, four weeks ago, I wrote about a bad experience that an Encino resident, Ron Reeves, had with United Airlines.

Traveling with his father and a relative from Southern California to Greensboro, N.C., the Reeves party got stuck in a series of delays in Chicago and had a nightmarish night trying to sleep next to the United baggage claim. Later, only after losing his temper, Reeves got United to transfer his party to a Delta flight through Atlanta. He finally arrived in Greensboro a day late; his baggage arrived the next day.

Initially, United was unresponsive to Reeves’ complaints. But after the column appeared, two separate divisions of the airline made amends, perhaps each not knowing what the other was doing.

One sent Reeves $600 in compensatory vouchers, to be cashed in for future travel, along with a letter blaming the weather for the delays, thus absolving the airline of fault.

The other sent Reeves checks refunding $1,311, the total round-trip fare for his party. But there wasn’t a word of explanation.

When Reeves notified me, I contacted United Airlines, asking just why they had acted as they did.

United spokesman Matt Triaca confirmed that the airline had given Reeves a full refund, plus the vouchers, paying him back more than the trip was worth.

But he wouldn’t say why it acted as it had, or even whether sending both the vouchers and the refund was a mistake.”I can’t go into that,” he said. “Our policy is not to disclose the reasons why.”

*

Quite often, I find, companies are afraid to claim credit for a good deed for fear thousands of other aggrieved customers will make claims for the same treatment.

But I have the impression from my own recent travel on United that this airline is trying to put its best foot forward these days.

On my two flights, in contrast with frequent past United silence about the real cause of delays, pilots were very frank about delays--in one case a slight bumping of another plane at Chicago, in the other a radar warning light. And they were back on the PA system several times on the corrective measures taken.

I appreciated the explanations. And I’m glad Reeves got more than fully reimbursed for his troubles, though it would be nice if United would explain just what it was doing and why.

Finally, after a second column two weeks ago about extraordinarily high rates on long distance calls charged to AT&T; on another company’s calling card, more than a dozen readers e-mailed me that I was missing the boat entirely.

They said it’s unnecessary to make long distance calls through any regular long distance carrier when a customer can simply buy a cheaper prepaid calling card.

Several readers specifically mentioned Costco, which markets a Sprint prepaid calling card, 480 minutes of long distance calls anywhere in the U.S. for $19.99, or less than 4.2 cents a minute. That compares with AT&T; calling card rates of 25 cents a minute.

With a prepaid calling card, you simply dial an access number, give your code, and you can learn afterward just how much has been deducted from the minutes remaining on your card. Plus, there are no annoying minimum monthly fees.

The Costco offering is only an example. There are many other prepaid calling cards. And many companies offer lower straight long distance rates than the Big Three companies, AT&T;, MCI and Sprint.

Surely, word of all this will get out, and market shares will change appropriately. Regardless, I’m always glad to be informed by readers of something I wasn’t up on yet.

*

Ken Reich can be contacted with your accounts of true consumer adventure at (213) 237-7060 or by e-mail at ken.reich@latimes.com.