Lift Op customer service debacle at WF

Whiteface's Lift Ops customer service is on par or worse than than the airlines.  here is a comparison to a the airline industry

Cattlecar Airlines lays a good deal of of its pilots off and then struggles manning flights.  WF laid off a ton of its lifties a last week and now can't seem to staff its lifts to fly customers to their desired location of the top of the mountain.

The weather guys says a storm may be coming but then again it may not given that we are talking about the weather so Cattlecar Airlines decides it will tell many of the remaining pilots to not bother coming to work the next day.  WF looks at a windy forecast and decides this is the time to save that whopping $80 a day that they pay their lift ops personnel since they won't be needed.  Then it turns out its not really windy on a busy saturday and it only takes one lift ticket to pay for that extra liftie but alass they are not at WF.  WF didn't groom anything up high since they knew it was windy and had no lifties to run upper lifts so why bother.

Cattlecar Airlines knows it has a machanical issue on a plane that is delaying it from flying but it seems too much trouble to let the customers know.  Lets just keep them in the gate area in case we figure out what the heck is wrong and fix it.  On a another flight Cattlecar is delayed by weather but instead of letting their passengers know that the flight is delayed by 4 hours they cancel the flight but later decide to fly once conditions improve but all the passengers have left the airport already.  At WF the Mt Run shuttle must of had some type of issue that they couldn't get it started even though it was not at all windy at the top of freeway lift (lift I) but besides the lifties not loading lifs smoking butts no one was around to inform anyone what was going on.  They did get the Gondi running after 1pm but by then most many of the wet rained on customers had left.  The lift lines at the I lift where insane because of the race and it was the only access to the mid MT area.

Here is what should have happened.  Orange coat ambassidors and Signs at the lifts should have said that Mt run shuttle (the left side of the Mt run LWF) chairs was down due to machinical issues (since it could not have possible been the wind) and that winds were expected to drop with a anticapted Gondi opening of 1:30.  Even the airlines have gotten much better at keeping their customers informed about what is happening affecting delayed flights.  Whiteface needs to do a better job at staffing lifts, getting them up and running faster, and  letting customers know the issues and when to expect lifts to open.

Bruce is an ops orientated GM of WF so he needs to improve this area which should be his forte.  He also needs to improve customer service which may not be his strong area - clearly much focus needs to be placed on lift ops and PR related to them since this is two weekends in a row that the ball has been dropped and customers were very unhappy.

I would have to agree with this, though I'd probably have left out all the sarcasm.

That said, it was particularly frustrating today that the Mountain Run chair was not running, and no one seemed to be willing, or able, to provide an explanation. There's no doubt about it, there were a LOT of people having that same conversation today.

If there was, in fact, a mechanical problem with the Mountain Run chair, it should have been communicated. If for no other reason, it would have at least provided an understandable explanation. People still wouldn't have been happy, but at least you wouldn't have them guessing and speculating about the cause. For example, things heard on the lift lines today ...

"They're trying to save money by not running the lifts"
"They laid off most of the lifties"
"They told the lifties not to come in today because of the wind"
"It's too windy to run the lifts"
"They don't want too many people on Mountain Run"
"Management doesn't know what the f*!k it's doing"

A little communication would have gone a LONG way!

Face4Me wrote

For example, things heard on the lift lines today ...

"They're trying to save money by not running the lifts"
"They laid off most of the lifties"
"They told the lifties not to come in today because of the wind"
"Management doesn't know what the f*!k it's doing"

A little communication would have gone a LONG way!

 i think all the above are true

sarcasm is fun

seems like anyplace but wf was the place to ski this weekend

I don't understand it. I think the personnel were there to spin the Mountain Run lift...Little Whiteface and the Gondola opened in the afternoon so Mountain Run could have run in the morning. There has to be a reason why it was not used.

Sadly it doesn't surprise me in the least.  The mindset for ORDA operations revolves around the perceived saving of money with no consideration given to customer service.  The really sad thing is that they have no clue as to the long term effect that their money saving decisions have on their customer's decisions regarding return visits (their bread and butter if they had a clue!).  I wasn't there but I'm not surprised at all about what took place today, I just feel bad for those who made the effort to show up their.  I personally love the mountain but since it's 1 hr 20 min. vs. 25 min. to Gore I prefer to be disappointed closer to home.

As a side note, please don't blame the lifties (I was a lift operator at Gore the last 2 seasons and trust me, saying that we made $80 for the day is being very generous!), they do what they're told to do and work with what they are given.

I did not blame the lifties - its clear that ops management is at fault here.  Somehow lift ops needs to communicate better with other folks that are in charge of customer relations.  If you ask an orange jacket. patrol, or customer service you end up getting that they don't know when lift ops will have a lift ready and it will open when it opens.  Proabably not their fault because they are not getting the info or worse are told to not share the info.

I have a season pass so i wasn't a big deal for me but there were lots of folks from far away that were not happy customers.  I rode the lift with someone that drove all the way from Michigan to ski WF. There was also a lot of race families from all over NY for the J4 NYS championships who are going to go home and tell everyone how messed up WF's lift ops are.

At my company we say that every one has customer relatons responsibility but I doubt Orda has got that memo and relayed that attitude the lift ops personnel - again management would be responsible for that type of culture change.

ORDA is run by the state, therefore it is run by a bunch of politicians from the five boroughs.  I can guarantee you that the vast majority of them haven't got a freakin' clue about skiing or what a mountain or chair lift even looks like.  They look at how much they budget for ORDA and how much money it makes each season.  It's a crime that these people control the mountains.  We have to get control of this from them because they don't give a rat's ass about what goes on up here.  Maybe we should give them all a survival pack and make them spend a night up here in the woods in mid-February.  I'd love to see their sorry a##es shivering the next morning.

I had my brother's family at WF for their first time yesterday, I did customer relations to the best of my ability....

On a personal note, liftie and presumed snowboarder "Wayne" snapped the summit quad back like a heatseeking missile at my calves last week while I was loading resulting in the worst chair soreness I can remember, all while he was bullshitting with some other lifties (probably about what time they were going to get off and where their fake id's were going to work). If you see this man loading chairs, be sure to take appropriate measures to protect yourself!

Note: This has never happened to me at Belleayre, where the overpaid but heavily experienced older mechanically qualified lift attendants give you a gentle ride to the top.

In summary: What we need is a NYS skier czar to incorporate a skiers bill of rights to fix the industry like the airlines were fixed in 2009 limiting tarmac time in lift queues and mandating transparency about wind delays. But we also need to get the politicians out of ORDA who are from downstate and don't represent lake placid on the panel that runs it even though it was the fix to get people who knew skiing in charge of WF + Gore and not the dummies at the DEC.

IMO WF was run much better by Jay Rand than Bruce is doing now.  Bruce came up from being a snowmaker and seems a little too cozy and unwilling to push ops personnel compared to Jay.  Jay also had much better customer relations skills.

Was talking w/ a friend about these forums.  He said he stopped posting on forums because most people on forums were idiots who did not know anything.   You guys are proving him true.  The wind gusted over 70 mphs on Saturday.  That's a fact.  That's why the lifts didn't run.  They ran today and upper cloud rocked the house.  

   

freeheeln wrote

seems like anyplace but wf was the place to ski this weekend

seems like you should ski anyplace else but WF.  We will not miss you.  Honestly, we wont.  

I'm probably not the best person to weigh in on this because, like many of us, I'm not an expert on mountain ops. But there are some things I do know:

I looked at the NWS forecast for Whiteface Friday night, and winds were predicted to be 45-60 mph.

Many times when extremely high winds are called for in advance - and this was only 12 hours in advance - WF will have lift closures.

NWS and other forecasters BLEW the forecast for Saturday - calling for a gully washer that never materialized.

You've got to use weather information to make decisions. At times that information is bound to be wrong.

ALL GMs are tasked with the job of spending limited funds in most effective possible way. ORDA GMs are certainly not protected from pressure to perform.

Finally - one thing I've learn from my dealings with Mike Pratt at Gore - there is ALWAYS more to a situation than meets the eye.

With regard to communication... I do a job and at times - often - I don't communicate well with my customers. I'm glad there isn't a forum dedicated to analyzing my performance.  I find Bruce to be very accessible and honest, so I'm not criticizing him for that part of his job performance. But if I had a choice between between a guy who knew how to run a mountain, and a guy who could communicate, I'd take the ops guy every time.

70+ mph.  Lookout Chair nearly hit a tower w/ patrol on it.  That's what happened on Sat.  

It was bad luck for the mtn and sucked for people who traveled great distances and brought a day pass.  But it's a weather dependent sport.  It's not Disney World.  It's not a god damn dome sport!  It's a big mtn and the wind ripped hard on Sat.  

And we had primo spring conditions on Mountain Run, Parkway, Thruway, MacKenzie all of lower mtn - which is way more mountain than most of these whiners ride on a regular basis!  

ScottyJack wrote

70+ mph.  Lookout Chair nearly hit a tower w/ patrol on it.  That's what happened on Sat.  

Scotty thanks for the clarification. I'd assumed that the wind never really materialized, and that caused the confusion. With winds that high, I don't understand the original post.  Is it hard to tell at the base when winds are that strong up high?

SJ, my family and I have season passes and I understand what you are saying.  But if the Freeway lift was spinning why couldn't Mountain Run lift spin as well?  We were introducing my brother and his sons to WF for the first time, and I agree with you that Mountain Run, Wilderness, Lower Mac were great, the problem was accessing them with only Freeway spinning.  That collection of trails is a lot more than what most mountains offer, but a $79 lift ticket should offer more than 2 lifts.

ScottyJack wrote

Was talking w/ a friend about these forums.  He said he stopped posting on forums because most people on forums were idiots who did not know anything.   You guys are proving him true.  The wind gusted over 70 mphs on Saturday.  That's a fact.  That's why the lifts didn't run.  They ran today and upper cloud rocked the house.

I would agree that many of the posts here are truly moronic.

That said, the one unanswered question is about the Mountain Run lift, and that lift only. The Freeway chair ran all day. When standing at the top of Mountain Run, there was certainly a breeze, but nothing extraordinary. I know the Freeway chair is more protected, but I've certainly experienced much higher winds at Whiteface with the Mountain Run chair running. Last Sunday morning was a prime example of that. The Mountain Run chair and Freeway Chairs were both running ... why couldn't they do that again this past Saturday morning.

Watching the clouds racing by overhead, it was quite clear that there were very strong upper level winds, and even late in the day, after they got the Gondola running, and then stopped it, we were wondering why they stopped it. Then, while standing at the top of the Face lift, a gust came roaring down Lower Empire and almost knocked us on our butts ... to which we said, "Oh ... I guess that's why the Gondola isn't running anymore".

Forgetting all that ... the original point of this thread, is that there was NO communication regarding WHY the Mountain Run chair, specifically, wasn't running. I asked several mountain hosts, and a ski patroller, and the responses I got were shrugged shoulders, as if to say, we don't know and we don't get it either. If they just had one of the lifties over there telling people, "right now, the winds are too strong and we can't run it", people may not have believed it, but at least there would have been an explanation.

Also, with regard to the lifties themselves, over the last couple of weeks, a number of the snowmaking crew have been moved to lift operations. Unfortunately, there is no doubt, that these guys have either not been properly trained, or they simply don't care about what they're doing. While loading the Summit Quad one day during President's week with my son, we were standing waiting for the chair to come around. As it did, we realized that the seat was in the up position, with only an empty frame waiting for us. At the very last second, and I really do mean the very last second, the lifty noticed it and slammed the seat down just as the chair reached us. My son is quite small, and there's no doubt that had he sat on the open frame, he would absolutely have fallen through ... this could have been a very bad situation had is knees wrapped around the frame while is upper body went through it. If management is going to put people in job positions, those people should be properly trained and supervised. There should be no disagreement on that.

Upon further reflection (and a re-read) I understand the legitimize of the original question.  Do not know why H was not running.  Do know G (Little WF Double) did operate once winds became manageable.    

Hopefully you guys hung in there and got some great skiing on Sat.  More hopeful you stuck around and got some awesome skiing on Sun.

I was quite irked by the repeated sarcasm of the freeheelin dude...  I apologize to all but him.