The Customer Is Always Right Except when the subject is "non-refundable" airline tickets. by BILL STEINBERG n this era of excellent retailers like Home Depot and reliable service providers like the hotel chains of Memphis-based Promus Hotel Corporation, I'm getting used to a square deal when I do business with large companies. That's not to say that my experiences have been absolutely hassle-free. But it gives me peace of mind to know that, with a modicum of patience, if something goes wrong, these folks will make it right. It's against the grain of this progressive, consumer-friendly backdrop that I offer my criticism of the ticket-purchasing policies of Northwest Airlines. In mid-May, more than a month before our travel date, I purchased "non-refundable" round-trip tickets on the Northwest Web site for my wife and me to fly to Chicago. At $261 round-trip per person, the fares didn't strike me as a compelling bargain. I booked our seats to assure our first-choice departure times. Very soon after that, while reading The Wall Street Journal, I saw that Northwest was promoting a fare sale that covered the period of our upcoming travel. Our Thursday departure precluded us from qualifying for the cheapest rates, but I was told that the price of our existing tickets had dropped $30. A simple refund to my credit card would have made me happy, but Northwest's policy was to issue vouchers with a shelf life of one year. A few days before our trip, with almost a month having passed, I called Northwest to see about the status of my vouchers. I was told that the process took much longer than a month. What if I needed to travel again on Northwest before my vouchers arrived? What if I didn't fly on their airline at all in the 12 months following receipt of the vouchers? Wasn't this really a policy not to readily refund the money passengers were entitled to? The woman on the phone reminded me that I willingly bought "non-refundable" tickets. She implied that the airline was doing me a favor by giving me the vouchers. More than another month has gone by. I still have not received the vouchers. When you are unable to get satisfaction on a complaint with Northwest by going through channels on their various toll-free numbers, finally you are told to call a long-distance number in Minneapolis at your own expense. When you ask if there is yet another toll-free number to this complaint department, you are told that there is no such number. When you express dissatisfaction at having to make a toll call to rectify a service problem, the representative tells you that it shouldn't be a problem because the airline will refund your money for the call, provided you submit a copy of your telephone bill. When you ask how reasonable people might construe this policy as designed to limit customer complaints, she curtly refuses to comment, as if she's been here too many times before. I spoke to John Moore, the head of public relations for Northwest Airlines in Memphis, minutes before he departed the city on a business trip. We spoke about the ticket refund snafu and devoted a good portion of our chat to the implementation of computerized electronic check-in services for travelers at the airport. As far as my missing vouchers went, Moore said that "we somehow made an error." He told me if I would forward my boarding passes to him, he would make sure I got my correct allowance. As for the absurdity of a non-toll-free number for customer complaints, Moore replied that there was indeed "a solution in the offing." While he declined to be more specific, he stressed that the cost of deploying the solution presented a real challenge. He doubted that I understood the total volume of calls they process each day. I further told him that I had sensed an antipathy between Northwest airport agents and their attitudes about the new electronic service centers. If people are being lured with bonus miles to check themselves in at the airports, wouldn't it just be a matter of time before there are more check-in terminals and fewer live bodies? Moore said that the airline's overall goal with its 50,000 employees was to use the new technology to free up the time of agents in order to provide quicker and efficient check-in, particularly for those travelers who need more personalized attention. He denied that it was Northwest's goal to eliminate airport staff in the future. "People want more, better, faster, cleaner service at an ever-decreasing price," according to Moore. He indicated that with fares changing so often in a deregulated environment, it would be impossible for Northwest to spend the time and money to track those changes to the benefit of their customers' pocket books. "Does Wal-Mart contact you when they drop the price on an item you recently bought?" he asked. I told him I thought that his analogy was not entirely an appropriate one. On his cell phone, and nearing the engine roar of the plane he was boarding, our conversation came to a noisy and abrupt stop. William I. Steinberg, CFP, is an advisory associate at the Memphis financial planning firm of Kelman-Lazarov, Inc. His e-mail address is bill@kelman-lazarov.com.