I am a fool. I wasted three hours of my older daughter’s life that she will never be able to recoup – Thank you SuperShuttle.
This is a story about brand loyalty, shifting business models and what happens when a company completely loses focus on the customer experience.
photo credit: Richard ElzeySuper Shuttle's New York operation is a lot like this outhouse. Dilapidated, barely functional and, from a customer's perspective, it stinks.
It all occurred with the best of intentions. My 20 year-old daughter was planning her first solo trip to New York City to visit friends. The flight planning was easy and the lodging was settled as she was staying with a friend. The one twist was that since she was funding this trip herself, she wanted to be cost conscious. The first challenge was the transfer between LaGuardia Airport and the friend’s apartment in the Financial District.
Four options were considered:
- Taxi Cab – Door-to-door from LaGuardia to apartment – One Way Fare: $37.50
- Shared Ride – Door-to-door from LaGuardia to apartment – One Way Fare: $17.00
- Airport Bus/Subway – NY Airport Service from LaGuardia to Grand Central Station, change to 4 or 5 subway train – One Way Fare: $14.50
- City Bus/Subway – M60 Bus from LaGuardia, transfer to 4 or 5 subway train at 125th & Lexington – One Way Fare: $2.50
Option 1, the taxi, despite being recommended by her friend, was eliminated due to the additional cost. Option 4, the city bus was eliminated as she was traveling alone, lacked familiarity with NYC transit and the East Harlem transfer. Options 2 & 3 were very close in price, but again, as it was her first time in New York alone, we opted for the shared ride option.
It was particularly reassuring (at the time) to see that Super Shuttle’s familiar blue vans served New York City. Since its inception in the early 1980′s, I had used SuperShuttle sporadically, normally for extended trips when keeping a car parked at the airport for a couple weeks simply didn’t make sense. Having always had positive experiences, there was no reason to consider much had changed over the 10 years since I had used them last – after all, they had expanded to serving 33 airports.
I was a loyal, albeit infrequent customer, who didn’t think twice about trusting this company to provide a great experience to begin my daughter’s visit to New York, so we booked and pre-paid for round-trip LGA-Manhattan transfers on SuperShuttle through Orbitz.
Wow – I could not have been more mistaken. continue reading →
