ICANN Ombudsman Gets Cited For Abusive & Offensive Behavior On A Flight & Loses Appeal
The Ottawa Citizen tells the story of Frank Fowlie, who is the first ombudsman for (ICANN), who lost a personal grievance of his own against Air Canada after an argument over an in-flight meal.
Mr. Fowlie who job s to hear and investigate complaints about ICANN, was flying from Paris to Montreal last March when he “had an angry confrontation with a flight attendant in executive class”.
Fowlie says he was upset that the attendant forgot to serve him a meal and, after complaining he had waited up to 45 minutes, admits he might have muttered something about “typical Air Canada service.”
The flight attendant claimed Fowlie swore and shouted at him.
The service director on the flight invited Fowlie to the galley to discuss the problem. The confrontation escalated, and she claimed Fowlie was “physically imposing” and pointed his finger in her face, an allegation he denies.
Fowlie admits that he referred to the flight attendant as “the little man”.
The service director on flight, issued a warning card for unruly behavior and reported the incident to the captain. Fowlie was moved to another seat for the rest of the flight. He tried to see the flight attendant’s name tag and, on a trip to the washroom, tried to snap his picture.
When Fowlie arrived in Montreal, he was told he would not be allowed to board his connecting flight to Vancouver basically getting tossed off the connection.
He wound up taking another flight home the following day.
“They basically treated me like a child and gave me a time out. I was not going to fly home that night because I had the audacity to complain about the fact I didn’t get supper,” he said.
He filed a complaint with the CTA, alleging Air Canada breached the terms and conditions of carrying passengers internationally that it is required to follow.
The CTA last week dismissed his complaint, however, saying it was satisfied Fowlie engaged in abusive and offensive behaviour and said he hadn’t proved otherwise.
Fowlie says he was unaware of the evidentiary burden required to uphold his complaint and says the process is stacked against lay complaints who represent themselves.
He plans to appeal the CTA decision.
Fowlie is SuperElite member of the airline’s frequent-flyer program and logs 149,000 miles a year traveling around the world for ICANN
“If this is how they treat one of their best customers, how do they treat a casual flyer?” he is quoted as saying
Exactly Mr. Fowlie, welcome to the domainers world in trying to get ICANN to listen to matters that concern us even attempt to put us out of business.
I can understand the frustration with a corporation not treating their best customers well.
In the case of domainers, who last time VeriSign counted them decided they were responsible for 7% of all .com/net domain registrations.
Now I know you were responsible for 140,000 miles, all in executive class appearently, on Air Cananda, but I’m sure that represents well under 1/10 of 1% of all miles flown by Air Canada in a year.
Image if you were responsible for 8% of their revenue stream and then at every turn they allowed your fees to be raised, put in rules that made it even easier for them to bump you off flights or even worse, put you to coach, how would you feel about the Airline?
Welcome to the world of domainers Mr.Fowlie, where our 7% funding of ICANN gets us nothing but scorn, ever increasing regulations aimed squarely to put us out of business and cost increases in a time of recession, that ICANN granted to the central registry.
Moreover as a domainer faced with UDRP, WIPO actions, and now the proposed Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS), all procedures put into place to take my property away, I love this quote in the story:
“”Fowlie says he was unaware of the evidentiary burden required to uphold his complaint and says the process is stacked against lay complaints who represent themselves.”"
“”The process is stacked against lay complaints who represent themselves.”"
Welcome to the world of domainers.
Talk about a stacked deck, try dealing with the incredibly inconsistent decisions of UDRP and WIPO’s panels and check out the current proposal for the URS which ICANN committees are floating around, which would take down a domain without notice to a domain holder.
Now to the final and bigger question.
If the ombudsman for ICANN conduct himself in this manner over a late meal, how can he be trusted to expected to coolly and justly decide important issues regarding ICANN?
What is an ombudsman?
“The purpose of the office is to ensure that the members of the ICANN community have been treated fairly. The Ombudsman will act as impartial officer and will attempt to resolve complaints about unfair treatment by ICANN”
Umm.
Judgment, and persuasiveness?
Now I’ve flown quite a bit in my life, even on Air Canada, although I’m sure not as much as Mr. Fowlie (and not always in Executive class), but I can tell you I have never been denied entry onto a flight, never been cited by the Airline for abusive behavior, and never called a flight attendant “the little man” or any other such derogatory term.
This is not to say that I’ve never had to ask for a meal or a drink or for better service, but I guess I have been able to get what I needed without getting abusive.
My grandmother told me you get more with honey than vinegar. I bet your grandmother told you the same thing.
So if you can’t be persuasive enough to get a meal in first class and then decide to play the “little man” card what does that say about your judgment?
Judgment, and persuasiveness?
I don’t think so
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As I mentioned on Twitter, this is not an isolated example, either. See, for example:
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga-200709/msg03246.html
(where the ICANN Ombudsman blog was censored after the ombudsman violated the privacy of a pending case, by revealing details of the case on his blog) Read the blog comments at:
http://www.webcitation.org/5k4Bnu1kS
in particular. That alone should have caused an investigation of the Ombudsman’s office by an independent 3rd party. Notice the original blog and comments disappeared — ICANN censorship at work.
Also, see:
http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga-200709/msg03260.html
This isn’t an isolated incident, either. See the now-censored blog (and especially the comments) at:
http://www.webcitation.org/5k4Bnu1kS
where Frank violated the privacy of an ongoing complaint. Then, they censored the blog entirely, and the comments.
The full decision of the Canadian Transportation Agency can be read at:
http://www.otc-cta.gc.ca/decision-ruling/decision-ruling.php?id=29382&lang=eng
nice post… icaan is a society of crooked bully boys… it’s good to have someone follow them and point it out.
Excellent article! You draw a great parallel here and it’s amazing to see this happen to the complaint investigator for ICANN!!
I’ve seen this happen to several people on airplanes – you can’t verbally abuse the flight attendants or other passengers and it’s disappointing to see anyone treat someone else like this. Unfortunately I doubt he’ll learn anything from this experience as he seemed more focused on bashing Air Canada than explaining his behavior.
Really enjoyed this article and I hope that Frank reads it!
“Image if you were responsible for 8% of their revenue stream and then at every turn they allowed your fees to be raised, put in rules that made it even easier for them to bump you off flights or even worse, put you to coach, how would you feel about the Airline?”
I’m sure ticket scalpers represent a large percentage of sports teams’ revenue streams too. Doesn’t mean that they deserve the respect and service of the leagues just because they’ve figured out a creative way to exploit the system.
Hahaha good article for pointing that out
Peter
Actually those that use to be called ticket scaplers now are called stubhub.com and ticketsnow.com both of which the NCAA, NFL and other major leagues not only endorse but use on their official site and sites of their teams to move tickets.
http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/tickets/
This is education of the consumer and the maturing of an industry
Oh My TOTO! A WARNING CARD? OH MY!
@MHB
StubHub is a distribution channel for the leagues and is more analogous to a registrar in the domain ecosystem. Domainers are analogous to the guy who buys up tickets on StubHub and resells them on CraigsList or on a street corner outside the stadium.
Consumers do not need to be “educated” as to why they need to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a half-decent domain name. They need real choice, as represented by new top level domains.
Peter
“”They need real choice, as represented by new top level domains.”"
We will see.
So far consumers haven’t really taken advantage or shown any interest in any of the new choices so far like .travel, .mobi, .tel and even .biz
“So far consumers haven’t really taken advantage or shown any interest in any of the new choices so far like .travel, .mobi, .tel and even .biz”
.info has 5 million +, .biz has 2 million +, .mobi has around a million I think, others in the high hundreds of thousands.
As I’m sure you know, restrictive TLDs like .travel failed due to things like this:
“A .travel domain name will be available to all travel suppliers who meet the application criteria to become a .travel certified provider. Each applicant will go through an accreditation process to evaluate their business fitness based on the submission of a comprehensive application that will include business plans and financial requirements. The applicants will submit their application directly to an accredited registrar, who will transfer the information to the IATA .travel accreditation staff for review and verification. Once approved, the Registry Operator will be instructed to proceed with DNS zone file generation. At this point, the domain name will go live on the .travel TLD.”
Peter
I believe the restrictions on .travel were lifted a while back as the registry sold some at domain shows last year.
.biz has 5M registrations but their value has not impressed most observers.
I’m pretty sure there have been few that have ever reached the five figures.
So if you want to build a site around them go ahead, but as an investment you would be better off buying those five figure .com’s that you seem to hate.
Going forward, I suggest that Mr. Fowlie “carry on” his own “Happy Meal” (or two) onto his flights……and conveniently so, there are McDonalds outlets at the terminals at many major airports.
@MHB
“.biz has 5M registrations but their value has not impressed most observers.”
“So if you want to build a site around them go ahead, but as an investment you would be better off buying those five figure .com’s that you seem to hate.”
I’m not looking at this from the perspective of a domainer; I’m looking at it from the perspective of consumers, which goes back to my point that consumers do not need to be “educated” as to why they need to be spending five figures for a half-decent .com domain. The addition of new TLDs helps consumers, most of whom could care less what the “investment value” of their domain is and simply want a descriptive name for their website(s) at a reasonable price.
Peter
I have a post scheduledaround 10pm tonight.
Read that and see where I’m coming from building out a business based on an alternative extension and we will chat over there