United Airlines is going down the tubes
:: Saturday, February 16th, 2008 @ 6:56:26 pm
:: Tags: Rants, Travel
Normally, I am insulated from the incredible incompetence of some airlines because I book online using websites like Orbitz. Just now, I was forced to actually call United Airlines in order to book a ticket using credit from a previously canceled fare. A strong Indian accent picked up, and they guy was stuttering and was unable to form thoughts (stumbling over himself). I knew I was fucked.
At first, he told me he would have to charge a $100 fee for using the credit (fine, since my previous ticket was non-refundable), plus a $100 fee to change the routing. I balked at that, and he put me on hold. Then, he came back and told me that he would not charge me for the re-routing fee (that is what I final figured out after about 3 minutes).
It took a total of more than 20 minutes on the phone to book the ticket. I had to coax him during each step of the process because I knew that if I just answered his questions normally, he wouldn’t understand. I had to repeat just about everything I said.
United also recently announced that it will charge non-Premier members $25 to check a second bag.
I am so glad that I switched away from them a few years ago. I only had the credit because I had a cancel a trip to Denver a few months ago (United is direct and inexpensive to Denver). Next time, I’m going to book with another airline.
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I figured you would be in the 1K club from all the flying around. use 1-800-756-1000, 1K line, 1-800-325-0046 Mileage Plus. They are US based people.
nah. I am an AA guy, so I only have standard Premiere on UA. Used to be premiere exec, though. My dad is a million mile guy on UA. He is stuck. :)
The luggage fee is really annoying, I’m just a vanilla MP account. I had the impression that if non-1k folk call the 1K line, the staff transfer you over to India.
But that mess with talking to India–yep, I’ve had a few times of that, but with Amex. Really, really disturbing. I’ve had mixed experience with United–sometimes clearly someone from South Asia, sometimes sounds like Stateside. But it’s one of the continuing themes at Flyertalk–aggravation of talking with people who don’t know, and don’t speak well enough.