Unicorn travel startup Hopper is facing a pandemic-fueled customer service nightmare

Currently, hundreds of Hopper customers are trashing the app in their app store reviews, calling Hopper a scam, threatening legal action and warning others to stay away.The key complaint among many of these users was not only how their flight was canceled by an airline and that they couldn’t get a refund, but that there was no way to get in touch with someone at Hopper for any help. Hundreds of these are visible when you sort by “Most Recent” reviews on iOS, which is damaging to what had been, before the pandemic, a trusted and respected travel brand.Hopper, to its credit, openly admitted to TechCrunch it’s been massively struggling with what it referred to as “unprecedented volumes of customer support inquiries since the start of the pandemic began,” or 2.5X its normal rate.The company says it’s currently receiving over 100,000 inbound support requests per month, as consumers and airlines alike changed and canceled their flights. Hopper says customers can either reach out to the airline directly for a refund for help rebooking or they can ask Hopper to handle it. It’s confusing, to say the least.)But the root of Hopper’s customer service nightmare wasn’t the chaos caused by the pandemic and the airlines’ cancellations themselves. During the course of 2020, Hopper automated exchanging flights in the app, redeeming FTC issued by airlines, managing schedule changes, adding self-serve cancellations, and it rolled out follow-up emails to customers after they requested a cancellation.Lalonde had believed automation would ultimately be more critical to long-term survival than hiring more agents.“Would it have made a big difference [to add more agents]? It also plans to roll out in-app updates including a resolution center, escalation path, status check to prevent duplicate requests and add in-app structured requests, in addition to more communication updates involving email campaigns, better in-app messaging, and website access to check on booking status.It’s a wonder how a company in this nightmare situation could even survive, much less raise funds, when its brand is being dragged through the mud and hundreds — or even thousands — of customers have been unsatisfied.As it turns out, Montreal-headquartered Hopper will survive, at least in the near-term, thanks to a Canadian government bailout.In early May, Hopper raised $70 million from both institutional and private investors.