The TSA may awkwardly grope you, but United Airlines will flat out screw you.
The Story (Scroll to the bottom if you just want the lessons.)
I rarely allow myself the luxury of publicly excoriating a company that has wronged me, and I certainly never take to using WePay’s corporate blog as a pulpit for my attacks. But I’ve been violated. And, thanks to United Airlines, I now have an additional 4 hours in the airport (the Virgin America terminal, to be exact) – the perfect setting for an enraged blogger.
More importantly, I found my experiences dealing with United (and subsequently, with Virgin America) relevant to what I do at WePay. So, first my experience and then the lessons learned…
About two weeks before Thanksgiving, I booked a roundtrip flight on United from San Francisco to Los Angeles for the holiday weekend. It cost me about $170. The price was about 70% higher than usual – partly because I booked the ticket so close to my departure date, and partly because Thanksgiving weekend is one of the most highly traveled weekends of the year. No complaints there.
I ended up skipping my the flight from SFO to LAX because a friend of mine was driving down the night before; I figured I would keep him company on the drive, and I would get to spend an extra night in LA.
I was supposed to fly back at 9am on Monday, land around 11am, and be in the office by noon. I never received a phone call or email from United saying that anything was awry, so I went to the airport as usual. I did, however, receive an email from United Airlines Sunday morning, with the following subject line: “Online check-in is now available for your upcoming United flight.” Great, clearly no problems there…
When I showed up at the airport, I swiped my credit card at the kiosk, so it could locate my itinerary. No luck. I typed in my confirmation code, still no luck. When I asked the check-in attendant for help, she told me to use the phone next to the kiosk to speak with a check-in specialist. The check-in specialist said that she couldn’t find my itinerary, so I should speak with the check-in attendant. I was stuck in an infinite loop. Awesome.
Back to the check-in attendant – she said that I must have gotten my confirmation number wrong, and that I was probably trying to check in to the wrong airline. When I told her the flight number, she confirmed that it was the right airline, but still couldn’t find my itinerary. At this point, SHE WAS GETTING ANNOYED WITH ME, and she insisted that my confirmation number was wrong.
I exited the line, found the confirmation email FROM UNITED AIRLINES in my email (thank you iphone), and the email saying that online check-in was available for my flight. I showed the check-in attendant my phone – I basically had to force her to look at it. After hitting about two or three keys on her keyboard, she said that I had been kicked off my flight because I missed the first half of my round-trip. She was happy to explain that United does this “because sometimes it’s actually cheaper to book a roundtrip flight than it is to book a one-way ticket. So in order to stop people from gaming the system, they automatically cancel the second half of your trip if you miss the first half.” She kindly explained that it’s stated “on their website.”
I, of course, having foolishly failed to read the United Airlines Terms of Service before booking my ticket, wasn’t aware of this policy. I also never received notification from United (I gave them my phone number and email address when I booked the tickets). I also received an email from them Less than 24 hours before my return flight, telling me that I was ready to check-in. When I asked the check-in attendant what I could do, she said I had to go to United’s “Additional Services” counter.
At Additional Services, I explained what happened, and asked if I could be put back on my flight. The Additional Services attendant said “no, it’s full.” I asked if I could be on the next flight. That was full as well. The first available flight was at 4pm (7 hours later). It was over $300, and my previous two flights (the one I missed, and the one they kicked me off) could not be used as credit toward that flight.
I asked to speak to a supervisor. The woman walked over to her supervisor, whispered something in her ear, and the supervisor simply shook her head “no” without ever looking up from her computer screen. I walked over to the supervisor to explain my situation, but she wouldn’t listen to me or help me find a solution. She just kept saying: “that’s our policy; it says so on our website.” When I got frustrated, she said: “sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the line, or I will call security.” (By the way, the original “Additional Services” attendant was laughing at this point – at me!). By now, I just wanted to get on any flight home. I didn’t know what to do, but I left the line to avoid being removed by security. I was offered zero recourse and shown absolutely no empathy.
I walked to the Virgin America counter, and asked to be put on the first flight to SFO. I was greeted with a smile (and some groovy music and disco lighting). The attendant regrettably informed me that all the flights were booked until 1pm. She volunteered to put me on that flight, and allow me to fly standby for every flight to SFO departing before then. The experience was warm and human. I ended up telling the attendant about my experience with United. She was as surprised as I was.
Lessons Learned
- Don’t optimize for the edge-case. Or, even better, don’t piss off 10% of your customers because you may get gamed by .001% of them (especially if the total liability is small). How often is it actually cheaper to buy 2 tickets (roundtrip) than it is to buy 1. If the answer is “very often”, then United should fix it’s pricing algorithm because it’s ridiculous. In those *rare* cases when it is actually cheaper, how often do people actually game it? Those people would have to a) only want to go 1-way, b) notice that it is cheaper to fly roundtrip, c) line up the dates perfectly. To avoid letting those people save a few bucks (after all, how much can you *actually* save by doing this), they DESTROYED my experience. It’s okay to let some people get away with small things in order to avoid destroying the experiences of legitimate customers.
- Make it easy to access “customer support”. I was physically standing next to a support agent, and she told me to CALL support. Strike one. She was frustrated because my problem was not easily solved. Imagine how frustrated *I* was. Then I was told to walk to another counter for “additional services.” I was going in circles just looking for somebody to help me. You should never make your customers/users *search* for somebody to help them. Customer support should be called “delayed sales” because even though I am a customer now, you need to sell me on why I should continue to be a customer.
- Performance and design matter. It was easier to book a ticket on Virgin America because the check-in/sales counter had a more intelligent design that resulted in a shorter line. In addition, the counter was elegant. I had a positive feeling when I was done. Leaving United’s counter was like leaving a hospital. Leaving Virgin’s was like leaving a hip lounge.
- Humanity, Empathy and Compassion are a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, these things are not easily scalable, so they get lost in the shuffle. Virgin clearly enforces these qualities. If they don’t, then they do a great job hiring people that naturally embody them. I want to fly Virgin again because the people were nice and normal. The United employees were rude and they treated me like an annoyance. Startups have a big advantage – since they don’t have a ton of customers, they are forced to treat all of them like they are important and special. Some companies lose this when they reach a certain size. These companies risk getting beaten by others with comparable service/product offerings with comparable pricing plans simply because they no longer treat customers with respect and dignity.
- Flexibility can be scalable. United attendants kept telling me that I was screwed because of United’s policy. “So make an exception,” I said. I was clearly getting the shaft, but they were unwilling to accommodate me. The supervisor actually told me to “take it up with corporate”. I thought she was joking at first. Zappos has a solution for this: hire intelligent people, give them general guidelines, and allow them to make decisions with (their own) personalities. That’s why Zappos has such great customer service. Every customer case is different, and some require unique solutions. Following a script or rigid “policy” is just going to piss off your already pissed off customers. Hire people capable of making decisions/exceptions and entrust them to do so. Most humans are capable of understanding the tradeoff between short term benefit and long term ramifications. Whatever money United was able to *save* by screwing me is probably less than the value of a really, really pissed off and vocal ex-customer.
- Always offer a solution. My biggest problem with my United Airlines experience was that they offered no recourse. Okay, I get it. You kicked me off my flight to enforce your rigid and ridiculous policy. Now what? They hadn’t lost me as a customer at that point. If they booked me on the next flight (or even suggested that I fly standby) it would have been fine. But they bounced me all over the place, and didn’t solve my ultimate problem: getting back home.
- Apologize if the customer thinks you are wrong (or if you are wrong). Keeping customers happy is relatively simple. If you are wrong (or if they think you are wrong), apologize, fix the problem, and try to make up for it – somehow. Be humble and empathetic. Customers are actually shockingly forgiving, as long as they feel like you are taking them seriously, and genuinely trying to solve their problems. I would have been happy, and United Airlines could have avoided a pissed off rant, if the check-in attendant would have simply said: “wow, it does suck that you were kicked off your flight without any warning whatsoever. It’s our policy, but I’m sorry that you fell victim to it. Let’s see what we can do to get you home.”
United and American Airlines are the absolute worst. My wife and I have been jerked around by both repeatedly.
American actually changed our flight to our honeymoon from one with 1 layover to one with two and didn’t tell us. The one with 2 was $300 cheaper but the only way to get the better price was to buy our tickets again and request a refund through the mail or pay $200 to get the ticket transferred. American Airlines literally had no way to handle refunds online or over the phone. Things may have changed as this was in 2007.
We have made it our goal to fly those 2 airlines as little as possible even if it costs us time and money. We also spread the message of how horrible these 2 airlines are at servicing customers. I hope both of them go out of business and soon.
Awesome analysis. Fire in belly leading to great insight.
BTW, I went through a similar experience years ago with United. I will never fly them again.
All airlines have problems, and they are all facing economic challenges. But some manage to deal with this better than others. Virgin Atlantic and Virgin America seem to rise to the challenge.
Wow! United Airlines sucks rocks. This is a great story because it was preventable. United Airlines had the opportunity to create a positive outcome for you and they blew it. Apparently, they don’t know that bad customer service experiences will impact a good number of potential customers. I have a choice of flying United in January. Guess what? I will be flying on a competitor to United Airlines from now on.
Pingback: on fear and loathing | Hiding in plain sight
Great advice for United and any company with customer service. Here’s a related blog of startup lessons from an airline experience: http://sixarm.com/blog/jetblue-crash-and-burn-user-experience.html
I have always had great experiences with Virgin America, and as for the major US-based airlines… well, I’m pretty sure that were it not for the fact that the government is actively protecting them from foreign competition, they’d all be toast by now. I can’t see any reason that anyone would choose one if they had the likes of Austrian and Lufthansa (GREAT customer service) to choose from instead.
United must be in an incredible internal crisis, because clearly no one there has any concern for customer service. I had an arguably even worse experience with United two years ago. A flight I was on going home from Brazil made an emergency landing in the Amazon. They say they offered me $100 in credit for the two days I was stranded; I’ll leave it to the readers here to assess whether that is a reasonable response. After multiple communications with their customer service team I think they tried to put me on a no-fly list.
http://www.webiphany.com/2009/10/21/what-happened-on-my-united-flight-back-from-brazil-two-years-ago/
Chris
While they could have handled it better when you asked about it, I don’t think that there’s an airline running that doesn’t cancel your flights once you are a no-show for a leg. I believe that it’s partly to avoid ‘gaming’ as much as to be able to re-sell the non-refundable seat that you’re giving up. Even around the world air tickets and rail bookings in North America do this…
You should have posed that scenario to the Virgin America agent of missing the outgoing leg of your return flight; I’d bet they would have cancelled your return as well, though they may have been more apologetic about it after the fact.
I can happily say that I am glad I do not fly United. And yes, you did get the shaft with their customer service. However the real fail was that you did not check in on the start of your round trip. It really does not seem unusual that United cancelled your reservation at that point.
I’m sorry you had such a terrible experience.
I just wanted to point out that cancelling your entire itinerary if you miss one segment is not something only United does. As far as I know, pretty much EVERY AIRLINE does this (maybe Virgin doesn’t? I’d have to check). So I’m tempted to say that you should’ve known what was going to happen. Regardless, United screwed up by offering poor customer service.
In addition, I think you’re wrong saying that 0.001% of the customers will game the system. Believe me, there’s a HUGE community out there of savvy flyers that live out of exploiting inefficiencies in the airline industry and their loyalty programs (much like bankers). I also doubt that that is the only reason why they have that policy; it is somewhat reasonable to assume that if someone doesn’t show up to a flight, they probably won’t show up to one in another city. Of course, this assumption is “less reasonable” when the distance between the cities is small (like SF and LA), but still. But still, they should at the very least confirm with you that you won’t make your next flight before cancelling it. Another example of greed (selling the same seat twice) at the customer’s expense.
Despite all this, I still agree with all your conclusions. Good post.
Pingback: links for 2010-12-01 « that dismal science
United has a new CEO — Jeff Smisek, formerly the very-dynamic CEO of Continental Airlines, which was headquartered here in Houston until it merged with United a few weeks ago. The betting here is that Jeff will kick some butt at United to straighten out their culture.
Their logic for preventing people from booking round-trip tickets doesn’t even make sense. If you’re planning to use half of a round trip ticket, just book it so the flight you want is first. Instead of SFO=>LAX, LAX=>SFO book the reverse.
Totaly agree with your sentiment and the lessons, Rich!
I NEVER fly United if I can avoid it and especially if there is a Virgin America alternative. Just flew Virgin this morning and, again, consistently awesome experience. I remember one instance where Virgin made a slight error a couple of months ago, but they were empathetic when I brought it to their attention and they COMPLETELY made me whole for the mistake.
Keep up the awesome customer services @WePay!!
You should check out The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely. He talks about a similar experience with Audi and how he published an article in the Harvard Business Review specifically targetting Audi though not mentioning them by name. The key takeaway he had was how empathetic custom service would result in a much better experience, but there also some really good insight into how people deal with annoyances and revenge.
That is the way all airlines have always worked. It is nothing new or particular to United. [I don't agree with it, but that is the way it is.]
I’m sorry, but that’s one of the most basic things business flyers know: you can’t just not show up for one leg of a trip and expect things to be as normal.
In this situation, airlines have always canceled the rest of the trip, since the have to assume you’re simply a no-show. This has been true for decades.
So all this rant is rather wasted. Yes, the airlines stink, and UA is one of the worst. What’s new about that?
Sorry, but a big part of your argument rests on the assumption that this is an unusual case. It’s not. Round-trip is routinely cheaper than one-way, and people routinely try to game the system.
So basically, you’re using your company’s blog to denigrate an employee for–wait for it–not being polite. Perhaps taking the high road would have been a better option.
Virgin says:
If a Guest fails to show up prior to the specified check-in times described herein for a reserved Virgin America flight and fails to notify Virgin America prior to the flight’s departure, Virgin America will cancel that flight reservation and all subsequent segments for continuing or return flights and the fare or Elevate points redeemed for all such reservations will be forfeited.
The worst part is that United’s policy does not actually stop you from gaming the system. All you have to do is buy a round-trip where the FIRST segment is the one you actually want to fly on, then skip the second segment.
Canceling the entire r/t when the first leg is missed is standard for every airline AFAIK.
Yeah, getting the checkin email isn’t great, and customer service could have been friendlier, but this is your bad for not knowing what’s common knowledge.
I was shocked, but pleasantly so, to learn that ExpressJet Airlines did not cancel my ticket just because I missed the outbound flight. (The counter attendant was not helpful, but her supervisor was.) It’s too bad they aren’t around any longer.
United Airlines is terrible. My family and I went to Maui for a spring break vacation last year, and we had the worst possible experience with them. We arrived at the airport a few hours early to get through security and all that. This was about noon. We were told there would be a delay. “Alright, we’ll probably just have to wait for another hour or so,” I thought. An hour later, they revealed that they had sent the wrong airplane to pick us up, and that 60 people were not going to be able to board the plane. Okay, now we are getting serious. the big problem was: they couldn’t decide which 60 people to kick off the plane. Now everyone is lined up at the ticket counter, and it must be 4 or 5 by now. One woman is calmly asking what is going on, and the attendant just gets so frustrated that she calls security. Security shows up just to stand around and look menacing. The manager shows up and tells us that we all need to calm down and it will be resolved shortly. At around 6, they finally decided who was getting on the small plane and they left. The rest of us wouldn’t be flying until the next day, so they put us up in a hotel about an hour away. They were nice enough to provide meal tickets, but not a ride back to the airport.
It’s just disgusting how bad their service is. I spent 9 hours in the airport and didn’t even get a flight home until the next day.
I actually had planned on doing something similar to what you did, but my friend warned me that they would cancel the whole ticket. After I called them, I got a confirmation of this — I had originally planned a trip to Durango, CO from SFO. This required a stop in Denver. I had something come up and needed to be in NYC, so I figured, I can just catch a flight back to Denver and take the connecting flight to Durango, CO. Nope! I ended up paying an extra $115 NOT TO TAKE THE FIRST PART OF THE FLIGHT, but to take the connecting flight instead.
How is this customer service? I don’t think United understands. I will never recommend them until the day I die unless they change their ways.
Wow, after reading this, I will never, ever fly with United again!
Sorry about your experience.
I already knew united was bad, didn’t know it was THIS bad though. Won’t by flying with them again.
Wow, you flew United Airlines, and you expected better? It is like another story of someone being burnt by paypal. You get what you deserve. I am not from the US, and even I do not expect good service or sense from UA. Maybe you have heard of google, why don’t you look up your airline before you travel on them next time?
Wow, I’m more shocked with the comments although the original writeup is also appalling. Really shitty customer service on part of the United employees.
The part I am shocked about is that people expect and accept that any airline can cancel your entire itinerary if you miss one leg of the journey. For example, You signed up and paid for a round-trip. Whatever the reason, you missed the first part, but the fact is that you still paid for it. If anything, the airlines saved some money because they didn’t have to provide a meal for you, or provide any other kind of service, but kept the money you paid. If the one way trip is cheaper than roundtrip, then your pricing model is stupid. Thats saying that if you buy one apple its more expensive than you buying two apples together. And if you bought two apples, and only want one, and decide to put one apple back or throw it away, you have to pay more because you are only eating one apple.
Imagine if your local grocery store did this. Would you shop there? I sure wouldn’t.
Uhh.. why was my comment deleted?
Great points about customer service! I’ll move United to the bottom of my preferred airlines list, even though I don’t travel with guitars.
The policy for flight cancellation has as much to do with “gaming the system” as it does with security.
United sucks, sure. But the round trip policy thing has been around for decades and is something all the major airlines have in their policy. Also, one way has been more expensive than round trip forever. Since when did air travel pricing make sense? Since never.
Usually people buy round trip and discard the return trip. It’s probably pretty rare to try to make the return trip the real one and discard the first, so yeah, they shouldn’t have done that.
But when you didn’t show up for the first one, statistically the chances are you just skipped the flight. Not that you’re one-waying a two way. If you skip your flight, the seat is reallocated to other passengers, especially if you are traveling the most busy days of the entire year. And once you do that, yeah, you have to buy a new ticket to travel. It’s no different than if you make a 3 day hotel reservation during the Superbowl in the city its held in, and then don’t show up or call the first night. Your room will not be held for you.
The inconsiderate person here is of course you because you did not call the airline to tell them you were not going to be on that first leg. If you skip a reservation, you need to call and let them know.
Still think that they should not send out that confirmation email.
In a year you will be a little embarrassed by this post. As many have noted, the policy you ran afoul of is a standard one that many travelers are aware of. Yes, United made some mistakes that didn’t help you become aware of it, sure. They did offer you recourse – their next available flight. It was just too late and too expensive for you. You rejected that, and started asking them to do things they couldn’t do (give you discount tickets, make seats appear out of thin air). When you wouldn’t take the first agent’s word for this, she referred you to someone you maybe would believe, then she went to her supervisor, until her supervisor felt comfortable just saying no to you. Is this service that will win your business again? Probably not. Is there a scalable framework in which they could empower people around the globe to discount tickets and shuffle seats to appease you? Probably not.
Exhausted and angry, you headed to Virgin, which is probably 100% branded to appeal to your self-image. You weren’t angry at them, so you probably treated them better, so they probably treated you better. You weren’t asking them to contravene any of their policies, and they had something available that worked for you, so it all worked out. Suddenly they are human, empathetic, customer-service geniuses.
All of which is a long way of saying, “Check yourself, first, my friend – if your original ticket was on Virgin, and you had to go to United to get a flight home, there’s a decent chance we’d be reading this same story with the company names reversed.”
Blogging in anger usually results in very self-centered reasoning. This is a good example of why it should be avoided – your first instinct was right.
Come now. United did exactly the right thing. Do you know the margins on those flights? Close to zero. They got $170 from you, and lost you as a customer forever. Lets say they make $5 off of you each time you fly. That’s 34 flights. Were you going to take 34 flights with them? What maximizes profit? And have they really lost you forever? A decade down the line, you’ll forget. I know. Delta did something even shittier to me, and I’ve gone from “never again” to “avoid them.” Besides, what really matters is quarterly profits. In a decade, they’ll have a new CEO, new employees, and so on, and while the people there are still employed there, their profits will be higher, and their bonuses higher.
There is a myth that good customer service leads to high profits. I’ve gotten great quality and great service from JanSport. I’ve had their hiking pack for over a decade, using it almost daily. Each time it breaks, they fix it for free, even though I offer to pay them, and even though each time it is my fault (slamming a car door on a buckle that kind of thing). I recommend them to everyone. To the best of my knowledge, no one I’ve recommended them to has actually bought one because they cost a little more. I haven’t had to buy another since they last damn near forever. The service cost them a lot of $$$, and they’ve had zero return.
The reason most successful companies treat customers like shit is because that’s how you make the most money and grow the most. It costs less. You can price your products cheaper than your competitors (or the same, and have higher profits). Most customers won’t know before they buy. Unless you’re in an industry with massive repeat customers, there is very little advantage to good service.
Always…yes always avoid creating a pissed off customer.
A customer that goes away mad will (for sure) tell their negative story to dozens (even
Hundreds) of people.
Yeah, it’s both true and unfair that a satisfied customer will tell their story less often and with less passion.
Pingback: Airline no-show policies and terrible customer service | Frequently Flying
I truly enjoyed your post, and while I have to take the side of United regarding the no-show policy, I absolutely agree with you about their terrible approach in handling you. Your “Lessons Learned” are fantastic. I’ve offered a full commentary of your experience and United’s failures on my site, as well.
POINT 1 – Calling the airline in advance knowing your not going to be taking the first leg of a round trip ticket goes a long way.
POINT 2 – United lost more business due to word of mouth – including this blog
POINT 3 – It appears we should all be Virgins and avoid being United
Rich: Way to go. My sentiments exactly! I just got off the phone with UAL to rebook a flight that I had to reschedule due to an earlier cancellation. After 10 minutes of talking to a electronic reservation recording, finally I got to a “live” voice. I had a $500 credit from the last flight but now I get hit with a $150 admin charge to use my own money. Probably should have figured that would happen but it is just not right. I fly every week, sometime two-three times a week. I go out of my way to fly Southwest and this is the exact reason why. The other airlines just don’t get it. They don’t treat people right, I’m an inconvenience, they don’t care, it’s absolutely wrong. I do whatever I can to avoid them. I keep hoping they will “get it” but they may never change, because they have a legacy mentality that cannot change or is unwilling to change. I am waiting for when they all go bankrupt because that will be what happens when consumers are continually treated disparagingly.
It seems completely wrong of an airline to cancel an entire itinerary without any notification — How hard would it be to trigger an email or SMS message warning of a pending cancellation and offering some alternatives?
Normal people cannot be experts in the minutiae of airline cancellation policy, and it is perfectly reasonable for a customer to expect their return flight ticket to still be valid — why should I think otherwise? Especially if you send me a “check in online” email instead of cancellation notice.
How hard would it have been for the United representatives to be polite? How hard would it have been to empathize with the customer? Here was an opportunity to deliver exceptional service, make up for a wrong (broken email notifications), and improve the system for future travelers. But that didn’t happen. Why?
I suspect the real answer has nothing to do with corporate profitability and everything to do with how poorly United treats their ticketing agents and how there is little or no reward for satisfying customers. An empowered agent who is rewarded for customer satisfaction would have figured out some solution. Apologize (free). Discount the full fare later flight and apply funds from the unused ticket (the marginal cost of an additional traveler on a mostly full airplane is probably $15). And so on. But this didn’t happen and I am guessing it’s because United makes it difficult for agents to actually solve problems (there is probably a set of uncomfortable hurdles an agent must jump over to discount or apply funds from one ticket to another). And clearly there is no incentive for the ticketing agent to report the complete failure of the email notification.
The ticketing agent was being human. The company doesn’t care to solve the customer problems, doesn’t respect the gate agents’ discretion in discounting and applying funds, and has no rewarding process for improving the system (reporting email notification failures, for instance). The end result is bad customer service.
As others have mentioned, all airlines have the same policy. But not all customers fly often enough to ever be in this situation.
As any international visitor to the US will tell you, face-to-face customer service in the US is usually unsmiling and sometimes curt and rude. It’s not unique to the airlines but probably applies to any industry with long queues. Half the problem lies with the customer’s body language. In over 600,000 lifetime miles on United I have not had a “never again” moment with them, but for similar customer experience situations I ask with a smile “how can I get over this hurdle” rather than “it’s your fault”.
The Zappos analogy doesn’t work for an airline, who have a finite number of seats to play with. Pax in this situation want to fly within an hour or two from that point. During Thanksgiving weekend I doubt if there were any empty seats LAX-SFO all day. If I were a crusty UA veteran with 20+ years at LAX, I would probably be a rude person. I don’t like it, but that’s how it looks.
My “worst” incident was when I was a Premier Executive two years ago and the check-in agent didn’t tag my bags as Priority and pulled a face when I asked her to do so. She then took delight in telling me that my family weren’t PremEx, so she “couldn’t” tag theirs. Predictably, their bags rolled off long after mine did at MEL. I had to console myself that I have a nice job in a great city that takes me places while she has a shit job at LAX and will probably retire in a trailer park.
As any viewer of those Airport/Airline/Border Security TV shows knows, all airlines have their daily quota of pissed-off pax who swear never to fly them again. Next time UA has the cheapest fare and the best connection times, you will use them discreetly.
I have to hold back from writing a book here especially because I run a customer support company and so I am extra passionate about the fact that business MUST treat their employees and customers as their most valued resources.
I have had a similar experience with UNITED with a similar result. They are truly a company that I hope no longer exists in 5-10 years. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum is Virgin which understands that the pecking order for building a great business is employees > customers > investors.
The saddest part of all of this is that our complaints fall on def ears with United…the only way to make them understand is to never fly on that airline, which after being a 1k flier with them I have vowed to never do – not matter the cost or the reason – who is with me?
Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » 7 Startup Lessons, Courtesy of United Airlines’ Crappy Customer Service
Pingback: Spring Break Vacation
Pingback: Picking a fight with an 800 pound gorilla | WePay