To Whom It May Concern at Continental Airlines,
First, our compliments: we have always enjoyed the travel experience and customer service of Continental Airlines. We use your branded credit cards and try to steer purchasing decisions towards Continental whenever possible. Your seats are comfortable, your entertainment systems are exceptional, your connections to Houston from Phoenix are plentiful, and everything was made better by your recent admission to the Star Alliance.
Our primary stress with Continental revolves around baggage policies covering international flights (and domestic connections) to Brazil. We understand that flights to and from Brazil can check bags with no over-weight penalties up to 70 lbs. This is an extremely valuable service for us as the extra 20 lbs across two pieces of luggage can eliminate the need to check a third bag for extended travels.
While in the end we have had no problems checking bags with these policies, it is not without effort. We now budget for additional check-in time at the airport to successfully negotiate to these rules with the distrustful service agents. Even the telephone agents struggle with our questions: if we call customer service three times to confirm the baggage exceptions for Brazil, we will get three different responses. If we call the Portuguese speaking customer service line, we can get consistent advice (presumably because they frequently assist Brazilian travelers), but even they struggle to point to clear web documentation.
Which brings me to our most important concern, and the solution to our frustrations: please remedy the inconsistent and lacking baggage documentation on your web site.
Let’s review the confusion, item by item, starting with the web page at http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/baggage/checkbag.aspx
It starts off strong, clearly documenting the exceptional baggage fee policy:
However, immediately below we run into our first issue in the fees table, which shows Hawaii, Brazil, and Japan as exceptions, but only the Hawaii and Japan exceptions are documented:
Moving to the page http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/baggage/excess.aspx, we see references to exceptional policies for Brazil regarding the number of bags that can be checked, but nothing on the weight policies.
The primary baggage page at http://www.continental.com/web/en-US/content/travel/baggage/check.aspx clarifies little else.
About.com (http://airtravel.about.com/od/luggageandpackingadvice/a/cobags.htm) makes a pretty clear explanation about the Brazil baggage policies:
By comparison, the United Airlines web site is very clear:
http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6867,52482,00.html#intl
As is American Airlines:
http://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/baggage/baggageAllowance.jsp#Dimensi...
And finally, Delta:
http://www.delta.com/traveling_checkin/baggage/excess_baggage/index.jsp
Our request to you is to clearly document the baggage policies for flights to Brazil, as the written documentation is in conflict with the policies we receive from customer service agents both at the airport and on the phone. Your major competitors document this clearly, including other Star Alliance members, and we humbly ask that you do the same.
Sincerely,
Brad Corrion
