Classic. Someone gets a lower-level customer service rep on twitter to make a statement based on incorrect and incomplete information about Airtags in compliance with regulation.
Media blows it up into this insane thing, that Lufthansa is evil, and doesn't want you to track your bags, so they can lose it with no repercussions.
Lufthansa clarifies things (once again, in line with law) - and then the media uses works like "face plant", "baffling" and "awkward". Assigning emotional context that ridicules Lufthansa.
This plays out all the time with the media and is a huge part of the reason why confidence in the media is at a all time low.
Then maybe it's time that lower-level customer service reps stop running official company twitter accounts. Maybe you and I see it differently, but most of the world sees a company's twitter account as the official source of information and fast-paced updates. It has as much significance as a press release from the CEO or an announcement on the company website. So if the lower-level customer service rep fucks up, outrage is warranted because they should have gotten someone more competent to run the account in the first place.
You're going after the wrong people here. Journalists hungry for clickbait can't wait for incompetent customer reps to tweet some stupid shit. So the "journalist" can blow it out of proportion. It's literally their bread and butter.
> You're going after the wrong people here. Journalists hungry for clickbait can't wait for incompetent customer reps to tweet some stupid shit. So the "journalist" can blow it out of proportion. It's literally their bread and butter.
You're quick to spread around accusations of incompetence and dishonesty.
Is it too hard to think that a corporation's main PR communication channel actually reflects the company's official PR policy, and that their backpedalling is really the company changing it's public message to reflect a change of heart in a company policy?
Until there is new information presented, I will continue to assert that they have not changed. (That first part of the sentence is copied from verbatim from a CSR email when explaining an exceptionally bad experience with them)
"executive's fail-nephews" is still much better than what it really is, which is usually underpaid slaves in boiler rooms in third-world countries right next to the phone scam call centre.
I worked for a company who had sales running the twitter account.
Sales wanted the tech support folks (me included) to answer questions ... but the nature of the setup always included a TON of needed background information. So we just trained the sales drones to teach them how to efficiently shepherd the customers through the process of opening a ticket / open one for them and etc.
It kept the twitter stream to mostly sales type stuff, that worked.
I think you're both right in different ways -- part of the problem is operations...
A friend of mine operates social media (at a tactical level) for a very large company and it sounds like they have a good set of operating guidelines in place to prevent problems like Lufthansa has here.
Now, most of his job is just replying to the same questions all day long (and he has a small team of people to handle the volume). All of the information they give out has been pre-approved, but once in awhile something new comes along and he runs it up the flag pole to marketing and/or legal before adding it to his list of approved replies.
Additionally, he works with the communications department, sales, and marketing to create planned communications. His expertise is in social media, and he guides the communications from the other departments on what will work well on social media. But he rarely comes up with the actual message.
> but once in awhile something new comes along and he runs it up the flag pole to marketing and/or legal before adding it to his list of approved replies.
Of course one of the reasons everything has to be an approved response and you cant get "plain answers" from companies or politicians for that matter is shitty journalists looking for something they can take out of context and blow out of proportion.
You get me read the article. Here is the timeline according to the article:
1) Lufthansa said Airtag was banned:
"Hi David, Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from luggage as they are classified as dangerous and need to be turned off./Mony"
2) Lufthansa clarified why it banned AirTag:
"According to ICAO guidelines, baggage trackers are subject to the dangerous goods regulations. Furthermore, due to their transmission function, the trackers must be deactivated during the flight if they are in checked baggage and cannot be used as a result. /Ana"
3) Lufthansa backtracked, implying that it was the government who was wrong and they only followed the rules:
"The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrtbundesamt) confirmed today, that they share our risk assessment, that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk. With that these devices are allowed on Lufthansa flights."
4) Lufthansa confirmed with NYT that AirTag was allowed after all.
All I can see is Lufthansa was wrong, double down, had to reverse the course with some vague excuses, and still haven't admitted they were wrong. What exactly is out of proportion? When they said they banned it without clear explanation, it inevitably opened the door to speculation, and lost luggage is an obvious explanation.
I have to question your bias against the media here. As for using "face plant", "awkwardly", don't you see the walking back earlier tweets, but not admitting error, as anything but awkward?
It's definitely scummy journalism, but there's also a little misunderstanding in how social media reps work in Germany vs elsewhere.
Basically in Germany, they tend to operate with considerably more autonomy. It is not uncommon to see official Twitter accounts arguing with customers, where in the US you'd probably just get a canned response or ignored if you're sufficiently rude. So I'm not surprised that someone like this decided to interpret policy by themselves, and failed.
I'm not sure how to communicate this without making it sound biased.
Lufthansa's employees regularly act poorly and maliciously, when pointed out that they are in the wrong (weither local, foreign, or own company regulations or even being there when they're scheduled to) they don't care and they know they'll get away with it. They can and will leave you at the airport without a refund. It's been this way for at least a decade.
This has happened to me many times, and it has many documented cases on HN, Reddit, Twitter, settled EU261 suits, and FlyerTalk.
I've been a paying subscriber since 2009 and I'm still happy with it. I agree this article is a dud and I could do without the Wired articles (thankfully they're easy to identify and skip even if you miss the by-line -- just look for the first paragraph that's all setup and zero content). But they still seem like a fine outlet for high-level science & tech news.
Agreed. Unfortunately there don’t appear to be any viable replacements. Ultimately I just read less in general now which sucks. I hate what the internet has become.
Ars in 2008 was the place where people found out you could run arbitrary floating point computations on a GPU. I've never heard anyone talking about it but without those forums deep learning would still be this thing that looks interesting but is really hard to train at scale and no one bothers with.
I do not know… it seems like Lufthansa messed up here.
Lufthansa official twitter account clearly said: “Hi David, Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from luggage as they are classified as dangerous and need to be turned off./Mony”
So are you saying that official Lufthansa twitter account is some low level employee? So I should not trust messages posted on their twitter account?
I fly Lufthansa a lot and I follow their twitter account thinking that is official account to update me rafting different rules (COVID, etc.)
If they made a mistake that is ok: they should imeditatelly tweet again and said that. There will be no “crazy media”. But nope - nobody even customer service (I call them) did not know.
The normalization of clickbait everywhere is so disheartening. Including on HN. I have to click through to the comments and find the one correcting for the hyperbole and fake extreme emotions used in the title.
It is exhausting and I refuse to click through such titles - but nowadays that’s almost all of them.
I get what you are trying to say here and generally I agree with the context you are trying to add, but so long as corporate entities have personhood rights, I think we should treat the putative monoliths as what they claim to be for the purposes of assigning blame, otherwise we make it too easy to escape accountability.
In other words: this was not the actions of some random low level person at Lufthansa, this was the actions of Lufthansa because it was an authorized person speaking on authorized channels. If they spoke incorrectly, that is within their power to fix and prevent from happening again.
You really believe that it’s because of a single rep? Then you also might also believe that most management disasters are “programming errors” like that sometimes say?
> You really believe that it’s because of a single rep? Then you also might also believe that most management disasters are “programming errors” like that sometimes say?
It's uncanny how all of the world's problems are either caused by lower-end employees or acts of god.
The higher the position, the more infallible they are.
That must be why higher-uos are paid the most: they are physically unable to do no wrong.
When it comes to airlines, you can pick any brand, and if you mention them, there will be at least one person who will chime in with a horror story and claim they're the worst airline.
And it's usually based on a single one-off bad experience.
Is AirCanada bad? I have a big flight on there in a few months (honeymoon) and it's gotten rescheduled numerous times but otherwise service has seemed fine.
I have had a nightmare dealing with their customer service. Hour and half holds, dropped calls, inconsistent messaging, losing my information (personal address e.g. despite it being on an incident tracking website), lack of communication, difficulty with partner airlines getting ahold of them.
I took a Lufthansa+Air Canada trip because it was $300ish cheaper than the alternatives and I regret it. I also know many people personally who have had terrible experiences this past summer.
My suggestion would be to rebook if possible, but it might not be too bad since the summer is over. Either way I hope things go smoothly.
When things go right AC is fine. When things go wrong, do not expect anyone to have any empathy or be willing to help you in any way that is even slightly outside regular operating procedure.
It's bad in the sense that they constantly reschedule or cancel flights, are constantly late and there's absolutely no recourse to getting compensation.
I mean when they lost our luggage as well as that of everyone else on the same connection they literally told us their computer tracking system was incompatible with that of their partner... On top of terrible treatment at the Frankfurt Airport, children running up and down the aisles for 10 hours straight on the plane, etc...
> Most customer rankings disagree with you
They're higher than expected but not in the top 10 of any rankings I've seen... And dropping...
Just another anecdote: They’re the only airline to lose my luggage, and their complete lack of giving a fuck or competence in returning it was a tremendous and expensive pain in the ass. Only through pulling a personal favor with a friend in Berlin was I able to ever get my luggage.
There’s something wrong at Lufthansa. The queue to fill out my lost luggage form was like an hour long when I arrived, and looked to be just as long when I was done.
Yeah you definitely deserve to complain about that experience. Though I've heard about tracking incompatibility issues (not with them though) - does not excuse the luggage loss of course
Another example. I could excuse a lot but after what the employee told us, the visible lack of organization when we flew with them plus quite a few more anecdotes I'm definitely avoiding them. Seems there's something fundamentally wrong with their infrastructure. Hell, the airtag thing blew up for a reason.
Air Koryo apparently offers more leg space than most Canadian airlines, and I have a feeling any staff getting caught stealing luggage would be in some deep shit. Food pics look decent too.
I've had decent experiences with "crappy" poor country airlines--oftentimes they compensate with decent food and seats often feel relatively spacious. Probably more likely to crash and die, though.
There was nothing wrong with the flight itself. Everything wrong with their online booking/check in system, disorganization at the terminal and lost luggage (apparently due to system incompatibility with a partner airline).
Of course fully anecdotal, but my experiences with ryanair have been mostly fine - the planes are shit and they try and sell you bollocks on board but they run on time and it all kinda works.
Easyjet on the other hand... mamma mia, getting a refund out of them is a gauntlet, and at my local airport >50% (!!!!) of easyjet flights are delayed or cancelled.
> Someone gets a lower-level customer service rep on twitter to make a statement based on incorrect and incomplete information about Airtags in compliance with regulation.
I can't believe that someone pressured a lower level customer service. From my experience, they (the employees) decided to make up a new rule that benefited them.
This is like the French Canadian story of the Black Dog of Jean Labadie.
The character Jean Labadie is a good storyteller, who spins a vivid tale about a black dog, which doesn't actually exist. The people in his village believe it and start spreading rumors about it. People claim to have seen it, and even to have been bitten by it. Calls grow louder for something to be done about the ferocious animal as the false rumor spreads out of control. In the end, Jean has to shoot the nonexistent animal to calm the uproar.
I'd rather the opposite: when luggage is checked in, a smart tag is attached. Then, it's retrieved right before leaving the luggage area, such that you know that the person who got the luggage is the right person.
That said, that brings a lot of logistical complication and cost, and won't happen anytime soon.
Idk this doesn't bode well - for Ars Technica. Don't they have news to report that they pull these nothingburger stories out of thin air? What has become of the Ars of John Siracusa with his legendary Mac OS reviews?
Following up on what the actual policy is and how wonky it is to announce on your official twitter "Hi David, Lufthansa is banning activated AirTags from luggage as they are classified as dangerous and need to be turned off./Mony" and later having to clarify that it wasn't accurate ...
Is it even possible to ban AirTags? How exactly would that work? Even if you made the cargo hold a literal faraday cage, presumably as soon as you move the luggage the mesh network will be active again and immediately reconcile the location, which is what the user would want anyway.
Same way illegal drugs are banned, pass everything through a scanner that detects the illegal thing. In this case, it would a UWB (and/or BLE and/or NFC, AirTags seems to use all three technologies) detector that flags any bags for manual inspection.
Not saying banning it is right/wrong, just that there definitely is a way of detecting them if you really want to.
How would you distinguish devices that use the sake protocols from the AirTags with the current scanners? There would likely be thousands in an airport at a given time.
How would you stop someone from taking out the battery and replacing it after security, or cross airline luggage transfer of devices with AirTags?
Enforcement of a ban without customs level scrutiny seems impractical.
The bags travel on a conveyor belt, which passes through a scanner that scans one bag at a time. Whenever there is something detected, you know exactly which bag trigger it and it gets redirected to another conveyor belt.
Sure, but the scanners are to my knowledge not designed to look for something like an AirTag (they are glorified x ray machines). Not to mention that doesn’t cover luggage that’s not checked in, or a litany of other situations like luggage from airlines that don’t ban AirTags.
It would be more difficult to implement than say banning bringing a gallon of water.
From what I've read Lufthansa never banned AirTags, regardless of what a misinformed customer service person on Twitter may have thought.
They clarified their guidelines to say that active transmitters were not allowed in the hold because they couldn't be put on to flight mode (pretty much correct according to ICAO guidelines), and then after all this blew up later clarified their position by confirming that AirTags do not count (also correct).
I think that's pretty explicit. Official policy somewhere else in the company might be different but it's hard to imagine how folks are supposed to know what is up when they say it clearly like that.
If they just replied back and said “oh no - mistake: AirTags are allowed” then there will be no story. But they did not. So I called them and their customer support was not able to tell me. So I started believing that they really will not allow AirTags
There were some folks in the media who reached out to PR people at the airline, some got "don't know" others were told "that's not our policy" ... but nobody updated the official twitter account for a while.
I agree 100%, just a mistaken tweet could have been solved with a timely new tweet.
> regardless of what a misinformed customer service person on Twitter may have thought
I'd suggest that their published guidelines are probably more reliable than the interpretation of those being communicated for convenience by customer service reps. That's not to say this didn't have an impact, it clearly did, and customers should be able to trust this, but most of the reporting on this has treated it like an active decision to ban a particular device by a large company, rather than a misinterpretation by one individual in response to a question about a specific device.
The fact that Twitter is a customer service channel, the tweet was sent with "Qualtrics Social Connect" which describes itself as a customer service tool, the fact that there was a personal sign-off on the tweet which big companies don't tend to do when they're making policy announcements, but that they do tend to do when a customer service rep is replying to a customer question. Plenty of large companies do this sort of support via their official account rather than through a dedicated support account, it generally provides a better customer experience because no one wants to look up an account like "LufthansaSupportEMEA".
I'm not sure what makes you think this is not a customer service interaction?
> the fact that Twitter is a customer service channel
This is circular reasoning. Nowhere is it established that Twitter is a customer service channel.
Other parts of your in your first paragraph makes sense, but are also non-obvious and reflect expertise and evidence collecting on your part.
Plenty of large companies do also use Twitter for PR rather than customer service.
Unless clearly stated otherwise, there is no reason for anyone to treat an official Twitter account as anything other than an official statement by a corporation, no different from their official blog, or website.
It sounds like you are coming from the position of "prove to me Twitter does customer support", and you're right I went and gathered some evidence for this. If you started from that position though I think you're entirely justified in not realising this was a customer support interaction.
However, in my experience of ~14 years on Twitter, seeing support processes inside companies, and as a consumer, I think most consumers treat any two-way comms channel from a company as customer support regardless of whether the company is providing it. Many even treat review websites as customer support, despite it being wholly inappropriate for that.
Companies do support on Twitter because their customers are treating it like that, not the other way around.
There's a difference between the Lufthansa account tweeting out a statement, and a Lufthansa rep, named in the tweet, replying to one user. The reply means that it's hidden from anyone who isn't either following both users (unlikely) or actively seeking it out.
I see this interaction as closer to a customer service phone call where a rep got something wrong, and the only fallout should be that I as one single customer am now misinformed. The amount of checks and balances to ensure that messaging is correct doesn't need too high as it's low risk if one customer is misinformed. Whereas if Lufthansa makes a full statement they should expect all customers to be misinformed, or expect the press to pick it up.
This brings me back to my original point. I don't think the press reported on this well, because this was clearly not an official statement prepared for the press or the audience of all customers, with the level of thinking about it that should go into that sort of thing. It was clearly (to me) an isolated thing. The correct course of action for a journalist would be to confirm with Lufthansa, which appears not to have happened.
The guidelines are targeted at phones and other long range transmission equipment. AirTags use Bluetooth and have a relatively limited range, a very low transmission power, and don't really do much at all until they get pinged by another device.
It's also been fairly well understood for a while now that Bluetooth is not a concern on flights, and it uses an ISM radio frequency which is specifically set aside so as to not interfere with things like planes and other critical communications infrastructure.
"protect against radio interference" is extremely vague, I want something better and also evidence someone has made an assessment/update to cell service at least as modern as 3G.
"picking up service from multiple cell towers" seems like a guess if it's solely based on the above words, and also that's pretty different from planefuls of people arriving and overwhelming a tower.
You swallowed the yellow irrational outrage pill. Lufthansa had a customer service rep who (correctly) stated that things with transmitters must have a airplane mode (also true) - without knowing enough about airtags.
Now you are assigning an emotional context ("entrust my life", "incompetent") to a simple question of if Airtags apply?
I certainly can! Sounds like there was confusion even within Lufthansa about their own policy, or rather how AirTags fit into a broader less specific policy
Good question - at first blush it doesn't appear that it is. I wonder if that's because it was declared a deliberate act by the pilot and was not due to plane/pilot error/safety. I did a surface level dive on the source's methodology and didn't see it called out explicitly.
Point taken, though - you could say that the PiC of that flight might not have been had they better process/procedures.
Media blows it up into this insane thing, that Lufthansa is evil, and doesn't want you to track your bags, so they can lose it with no repercussions.
Lufthansa clarifies things (once again, in line with law) - and then the media uses works like "face plant", "baffling" and "awkward". Assigning emotional context that ridicules Lufthansa.
This plays out all the time with the media and is a huge part of the reason why confidence in the media is at a all time low.