If you’re a blogger you’ve probably heard of Damien Mulley. His is a big name in the Irish Blogosphere. He organises the Irish Blog Awards, among other things.
Recently his bag was lost by the baggage handling company – Sky Handling Partners. And as any normal, sane person would do, he rang them and made a complaint. And as anyone who has ever lost their bag is probably aware, he didn’t get much help. So as a blogger, he did what comes naturally, he wrote an article about it.
Then something interesting happened. He started to get emails from gay dating websites confirming his registration. But he hadn’t registered with these sites. From one of these sites he got the IP address of the computer that was used to sign him up. And surprise, surprise, the IP address was registered to City Jet Handling Dublin. This just happens to be the name that Sky Handling Partners used to trade under. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.
So, once again, as any sane, normal person would do, he contacted Sky Handling Partners to complain. Following his complaint, and the complete lack of service and assistance he received, he blogged about it.
Then something really interesting happened. His story hit the front page of Digg. The story now had an international audience. It even made The Sunday Times. (Note: It’s on page 2 of the 24th June 2007 edition of the dead tree version, but I haven’t been able to find it in the online version.)
Now the story descends into farce. Then he got a solicitors letter. A letter which requested that he remove his posts about Sky Handling Partners. So yet again, as any sane, normal person would do, he blogged about it. Oh, and he refused to remove the posts. His hosting provider, Blacknight Solutions, sided with him. In fact, they even moved his site to a higher capacity server to handle the load.
At the moment, from Damien’s side, that’s where the story ends.
As a former travel insurance claims associate, I have to say that I have heard this story hundreds of times before. More often than not, the items in question are never found. And if my experience is anything to go by, he’ll be lucky to ever get any kind of service from Sky Handling Partners. It’s a pity. It shouldn’t be this way, but these company’s tend to operate in a manner that would lead to other companies ending up either in court or bankruptcy.
This does remind me of a story I was once told, though I have no way to verify its authenticity:
Quite a few years ago a large airline took out a billboard ad outside Shannon Airport to show off it’s new low cost European routes. The ad went as follows:
Breakfast in Shannon.
Lunch in London.
Dinner in Paris.
Underneath, someone had scrawled in large lettering:
Luggage in Singapore.
LOL!! “Luggage in Singapore” that’s awesome :) So the company’s afraid his blog is getting too much publicity and they’ll lose business. IMO it’s better that they lose business than people’s luggage! :) I use Global Bag Tags and love them. I wonder if they could have helped in his situation.
Great story, though. Thanks. I didn’t spot Mulley’s whinge about it.
Let’s hope he gets his luggage back, and a major apology as well.
Imagine, signing someone up to a gay dating website from a work machine. Have they not heard of internet cafes? :)