The grueling experience that was the journey home from this wonderful holiday is well documented in my letters of complaint (which follow).
My main beef was the diabolical service and poor hygiene on the replacement plane, especially the Jakarta to Bangkok leg, plus the constant “goal-post moving” in terms of what we were told about the timing of when we’d get back to Heathrow…not the fact that a scheduled plane was delayed due to a technical problem.
Connoisseurs of complaint letters, dissembling responses to complaint letters and follow up complaints complaining about the dissembling responses as well as the original complaint…
…might enjoy these.
My Original Complaint Letter – 18 December 1993.
Garuda’s First Response – 12 January 1994.
My Follow Up Complaint – Via Our Agent Kuoni – 22 January 1994
Garuda’s Second Dissembling Response – 27 January 1994
My Follow Up Letter Briefly Stating That I Really Mean It – 31 January 1994
Garuda Offer £70 If I Sign A Disclaimer (But Not An NDA) – 11 February 1994
I do recall a friend of mine, familiar with airlines from being “in the business”, reporting that Garuda Indonesia was known in the trade at that time simply as “Ruder”, in honour of it’s infamous service ethos.
My only other strong memory of this matter – absent from the complaint but vivid in my memory – was Janie’s ability to sleep on hard plastic chairs in bright lighting and with large noisy tour groups marching back and forth past our seats at Jakarta airport. No-one other than Janie in out unfortunate collection of passengers got a wink of sleep in those circumstances. I also recall some of the other passengers finding Janie’s ability to just curl up and sleep that way very amusing.
