Chapter 3: "Nothing but problems with them"

I was thus obliged to postpone my business appointments to the only possible alternative date, which happened to be Monday afternoon (July 8th) and contacted the delivery company first thing early in the morning. The lady answering the phone refused to talk or even listen to me, since she seemed to have the order not to give out any information to AirFrance customers. She just told me that I had to call the baggage service of AirFrance, who would then call back the delivery company, who would then call me back to give me the information required. I tried to object that it has been exactly the service she was referring me to that had referred me to herself, since the baggage service of AirFrance could not give me the information about the time of delivery of lost luggage. This objection - although seeming perfectly valid to me - did not yield any answer, the lady refused to listen to me and concluded with the very helpful sentence that they had "nothing but problems with AirFrance anyway" [sic!].

Arming myself with almost divine patience, I called the baggage service of AirFrance (again...). After the usual five minutes on hold at every call at the customer service I explained my situation to yet another employee, not without stressing the urgency of the matter, since I had to know as fast as possible if I had to cancel the presentations that were scheduled for the very same day. The lady answering the phone this time explained to me that the baggage service of AirFrance was not authorised to make external telephone calls and it was thus impossible for them to contact the delivery company, which I was obliged to deal with. Furthermore, the said delivery company was perfectly aware of its responsibility to inform AirFrance customers and simply refused to meet this obligation. The telephone call ended with the invaluable information that "we have nothing but problems with them anyway".

I personally did not feel particularly affected by the troubles that AirFrance seems to experience with its partner companies, but considering the importance the withheld information had for me, I avoided to answer in a purely polemic way.