This should have been an e-mail to Sterling Airlines but as Sterling is so discount that they don’t accept e-mail – it’s going on the blog instead. Well, you asked for it.
This morning I found a parking ticket in the front window of my car. I spotted it from my apartment (4th floor) and as I knew that my car was legally parked and that my residential parking permit is paid for until January 2008 I got pretty pissed. Danish parking fines are at almost $100, so it’s a real pain to get one, and I’ve been fined before without reason.
I ran down the stairs to my car, just to find that this was no parking ticket. It was a flyer from Danish low-cost, low-end airline Sterling Airlines made to look exactly like a parking ticket. I mean: You really have to read it closely to find out that it isn’t.
Some fuck up at Sterling’s agency somehow had the great idea that to get more people to fly Sterling, we must piss them off. ‘Give them a real rotten morning, then they fly with us, just to extend that rotten feeling’, they thought. It might have seemed real funny during the creative brainstorm but guess what: It isn’t in real life.
I have flown Sterling twice: The service is appalling. If your loose your luggage they couldn’t care less (my parents tried that and Sterling pretty much told them to fuck off). If you want to move to a free seat with better leg room, that’s ok – if you pay for it in cash. Their planes are very often delayed … Sterling just sucks.
Now, Sterling feels it’s ok to fondle my car to place their ridiculous flyer under the wiper and fuck up my morning. The ad even tells me to place it on my neighbour’s car ‘just to tease’. Hell I won’t! I hold no grudge against my neighbor – why should I tease him?
I really don’t need Sterling to make my day more stressful. So fuck you too, Sterling Airways – and keep you goddamn hands off my car the next time.
Are we a little bit touchy this morning???
Yes. Sterling’s agency should know that Copenhagen car owners are always pretty touchy in the morning. Especially about fines, dents and key scratches received during the night and early morning. Any flyer under the wipers means that someone has touched your car, and as Vince says in Pulp Fiction: You just don’t mess with another man’s vehicle, man. It’s rude, dude.
What especially pisses me of is that Sterling is a business not willing to give anything extra to the customers. Flying with them is one constant reminder that you ain’t getting anything you didn’t explicitly pay for. Still, by placing the flyer, they ask me to be large, chuckle a bit and then in a good spirit place the flyer on my neighbours car.
No wonder Sterling is in trouble.
Why would you want to give people a ‘scare’, and then have your brand connected to that emotion? Bet the concept people are saying that the concept is: first you get a scare, they you feel really happy that it was just a VERY funny marketing ploy.
Yes, people love that kind of thing
BTW: File charges.
Trust me: If this were the US I would be having the first meeting with my lawyer right now.
I hope that Sterling’s agency can use my unfiltered, primordial outcry from this morning.
By the way: Why don’t you just consider it a one-man focus group? I’m even saving you the catering and the stupid present for the participants.
I want to be the focus group – but I will need sushi and plenty of it. Oh, and don’t bring your own concept group. K thx.
Today I had a very unpleasant experience with Sterling. 3 days ago I bought tickets for a flight to Paris for myself my wife and two kids. Not cheap a total of 5000DKK.
3 days later(today) i tried to change the traveling date. this was only possible if I paid a fee of 299DKK per person each way a total of 8 x 299Dkk = 2392DKK. The flight is in April not tomorrow.
You can imagine that I asked for some understanding – response – didn’t you read the conditions before you bought the ticket. No I normally believe in common sence. Sterling’s reply: “Your fault” (stupid customer)
Sterling, accept that there is no space for companies like yours. Accept that your way of handling normal people will end your business.
I join the f… you Sterling. You are only cheap in your way of handling your single time customers.
I join your group too. I flew for the first time with them. Departure is 2 hours late. They do not apologise, nothing. just “have a nice flight, f**k you” well Stirling sucks and I will not easily fly with them again – maybe if they are the last airline on earth. Their website has NO WAY for you to mail them – you have to put a compaint in a letter, which I will do. They are useless. Bad advertisement for Denmark. Peter, South Africa