The 'Chairman's Office' in most companies exists to deal with issues which have been escalated to senior level and to deal with VIPs/CIPs. They are usually given some level of empowerment to reach out into the organisation to get answers and fix problems.
For VS, it really doesn't seem this is the case. It's just a customer service desk with a fancy name.
Only one thing I ever raised with 'RB's office' (consistent failure of Priority Baggage ex-SFO in my case) got some level of (but not entire) resolution done by them, and that took a serious amount of repeat letters and badgering over a number of months.
(Eventually, the person at RB's office contacted the SFO station manager, who investigated and found out the crappy elastic tags often get snagged off by SFO's bag handling machinery. Because SFO's loaders sort into bins based on card tag, rather than flagged barcode, UC/PE cases with missing tags such as mine ended up in Y bins. Of course, VS still haven't changed the tag design yet, so the message never reached VAA's much vaunted design department.)
Unless someone wants to prove me wrong, there is no apparent regular communication between Customer Services, including RB's Office and the operational departments in VS, unless someone is really persistent.
Complaints seem to be destined to become statistics which appear in pie charts and graphs and punted around in meetings, and specific issues are seldom 'picked on' and discussed.
This means that 'early warnings' or 'minority issues' become lost in the noise.
To be honest, any message which reaches RB's Office should not be boilerplated. These are people who have a serious problem, or are a regular passenger and can provide valuable feedback to VS when they see things going off the rails. Every message received there should receive a proper investigation and reply.
This is an old article (2002), but says everything that was wrong with VS customer services then, and is still wrong today:
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=1364141Write back and push harder. Tell them you would accept their apology, if they had bothered to investigate properly, but what you've seen so far does nothing to encourage your repeat business if the spectre of bad service still exists.
Ask if your comment has just become some anonymous statistic about random blips in service, or has your allegation of shoddy service been properly discussed with the relevant crew members working that flight, and if corrective measures have been put in place.
Be clear that you are making a complaint against the crew members working the J cabin in that flight, and that you suspect that their attitude was motivated by ageism.
Explain that you're not just commenting about bad service, but (from what you describe in your TR) you genuinely felt mistreated onboard, and that you felt there was no-one onboard the aircraft you could approach to discuss your concern (you didn't mention if you saw the FSM at all).
State that unless they take your complaint seriously and investigate it properly, you will be making a direct escalation to Director level, not only about the original problem, but the subsequent handling of your complaint as well.
Good luck,
Mike
