After a mechanical snafu grounded his flight to Zurich, Aaron received several vouchers and an upgrade as compensation from United Airlines. Unfortunately, the vouchers and upgrades proved so difficult to use that he has given up and is now publicly vowing never to fly United Airlines again.
Aaron writes to United Airlines:
On August 5th, 2007, I had a flight from Dulles Airport to Zurich. I was meeting my family there for an once-in-a-lifetime hiking trip. I boarded the plane without difficulties, when the plane experienced a series of mechanical difficulties. We were kept on the plane, during an especially hot D.C. summer day, without power, without air-conditioning for two hours. We were then told to de-board the plane. We sat at the airport for a while, then re-boarded the plane, sat on the plane for another two hours, then de-boarded again. We then waited again at the airport for an hour, when it became impossible to make the flight to Zurich without violating your union policies. So the flight was canceled six miserable hours after it was supposed to take-off. I completely understand how this could happen. I can only imagine how complicated those airplanes are and I certainly appreciate safety precautions taking precedence. Though I would have appreciated some more communication and coordination from the customer service agents, I understand that they had limited information.
When the flight was canceled though, that is when the proverbial shit hit the fan. All the customers on the August 5th flight became to clamor to reschedule their flight for the next day. There were only two agents to handle the entire flight. I waited in line for another two hours and they had barely made a dent in the line. So I called a travel agent and had her book me on the next flight. I consider myself lucky to get that one.
At the front of the line they were handing out taxi and hotel vouchers. I live in DC, but it is about a $70 taxi to the airport. I approached the front of the line to ask for my taxi voucher and was told, quite rudely, to stay in line. So I called United Customer Service. They told me that if I took a taxi and saved a receipt I would be refunded the next day when I returned. So I paid for the taxi out of pocket, returned home, and then returned to Dulles the next day. Upon arrival, I checked in, and tried to turn in my receipts. The agent at the counter told me that they would not reimburse me. After explaining what happened the day before, she eventually agreed to give me $200 voucher. I thought this was more than fair. I had only spent $140 on the taxis so this seemed more than fair.
I got on my flight and made it to Zurich. My family was waiting for me in Zurich, and because of the schedule we ended up having to cancel a major portion of our trip. I flew home without incident.
I know that airlines are required by law to compensate their customers when flights are canceled for mechanical problems. Upon returning home, I stopped at the United desk at the airport to ask how we were being compensated for the previous day’s fiasco. At first I was told that I had received a $200 voucher, and that was my compensation. With much ado, I finally spoke to a manager who gave me a Systemwide Upgrade and another $100 voucher. I was thrilled with this deal. I was planning on a major international flight the next year and I couldn’t wait to fly business class on the flight.
In September I had to fly to Chicago. I went online to buy my flight and found a great deal. Having never used a voucher before, I was surprised to find there was no place on the website to enter the voucher code. I called United Airlines once again. They told me that vouchers could only be redeemed at the time of purchase at the airport.
Let me just take a minute to explain to you how idiotic this is. No one buys paper tickets anymore. No one. The only reason to have paper vouchers that must be redeemed at the airport is to make them impossible to use. But the whole point of vouchers is to make unhappy customers happy. By making the vouchers impossible to redeem you only frustrate the unhappy customer more. This stirs up all the reasons they were unhappy in the first place. This is the internet age. There is NO logical reason not to offer vouchers that can be redeemed online.
Anyway, I went to the airport to buy my ticket. The ticket at the airport was $125 more than online, and then they had the nerve to charge $25 for booking in person. So my $200 (reimbursement) voucher became a $50 pain in my ass.
Fast-forward to early May 2008. As I said before, I’ve been planning a major trip to Kathmandu, Nepal in early August 2008. I was excited to use my upgrade and voucher on this flight. I started looking at tickets. The cheapest flight from another carrier was $2000. United’s cheapest flight was $3000. But I was excited to use my upgrade and at the time I considered the $1000 premium worth it. I called United to book, and was told once again that I needed to go to the airport to redeem both vouchers and upgrades. Fine. So I traveled to the airport to book the flight. At the airport, I’m told that I actually have to mail in my upgrade. I argued for a while, but they were unsympathetic. I asked how long it would take to upload my upgrade to my account and they say a week.
I go home and mail the upgrade immediately to a P.O. Box in South Dakota. FedEX doesn’t deliver to P.O. Boxes so I send it Priority Mail. A couple days later it arrives. I still have the tracking receipt. But the upgrade never posts. Meanwhile the cost of the flight keeps inching upward.
Three weeks later, I call Customer Service. I need to book this flight. I spend three hours being routed to different people at different agencies and different people. Much of the time is spent on hold. Your music is awful by the way. The answer I finally get from a manager is that they have no record that I was ever issued an upgrade, and that there is nothing they can do. I ask to be reissued the upgrade, but they refuse.
The only conclusion I can come to from this ordeal is that you have designed your customer service to piss off your customers. Rather than make travel bearable, you antagonize them at every step of the way. Agents lie in order to pass the buck to someone else in the hope that the customer eventually tires and goes somewhere else. Well that’s exactly what I’m doing. I am tired of arguing with your agents. I’m tired of being passed from agent to agent. I would rather spend another six hours waiting on a hot tarmac in dark plane with no air-conditioning than deal with another minute of your customer service. That is why I am leaving United, and never coming back.
As a final note, I would like to remind you that I have yet to receive any compensation as required by law for the canceled flight on August 5, 2007. I expect this compensation to the address I have included below promptly. I will not accept vouchers or upgrades. Only cash or check will be accepted. Also, remember that I am concurrently filing this letter with various government agencies, so this letter should serve as notice.
Hopefully this letter will prompt some changes with customer service, but as you can imagine, I’m not holding my breath.
Sincerely,
Aaron
You probably are already aware of this, but because you were flying to Zurich, it’s likely that you are entitled to more compensation that your typical hapless domestic traveler. The EU (of which Switzerland is not a member, but does participate in occasionally) has much better traveler’s rights laws than we do. Check them out.
Be prepared, however, for airlines to try to weasel out of it.
(Photo: Zonaphoto )
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Having been through multiple delays with United I have ended up with a lot of their vouchers and experienced a similar situation with the added fees of redeeming their vouchers. I ended up calling customer service and they reissued my vouchers as electronic vouchers. I was then able to use them online with no added fees. Unfortunately by that point I had also given up on ever flying United again so I sold them on eBay. But United did make the switch and e-mailed me the codes so I had them within 24 hours.
Overall United sucks… My favorite “feature” of their customer service is that it can only be reached during normal business hours. Because no one has any flight issues after 5pm ET.
How about this one: United takes my boarding pass and a couple of other peoples’ and as we’re walking to the plane someone says, “you’re not boarding this aircraft” and makes us turn around. We wait and wait and after a while the agents leave the gate and we wait some more. I called and the agent on the phone said that the flight was canceled but it wasn’t listed as such at the airport. As a result I couldn’t change my ticket to the next flight at the customer service desk (which I was acutually originally scheduled on) and went back to step one: check in at the departures level outside of security. Still didn’t get a seat. I begged the agent at the new flight and eventually got a seat which was apparently their ‘gift’ to me.
oh and I paid about 60 cents per mile on this flight
So…to the OP, I can certainly imagine how your experience was. I haven’t flown on UA since, though!
My last (and I mean that in every sense) experience with United was paying $29 to switch to an earlier flight when a canceled meeting meant I got to the airport 4 hours early.
Five minutes later United canceled that flight and rescheduled me on the original flight
Ooops!
Ooops!
…[d'oh] Not only did they not offer any compensation, they refused to refund the $29 I’d just paid to be put back on my original flight. Conversation with Customer Service Supervisor’s Manager in India went something like this:
UA: The fee cannot be refunded
Me: You make it sound like it’s the money’s fault. If it were up to United, you’d love to give me the money back, but the money just refuses to go. It likes it too much over there.
UA: It’s not our policy
Me: Well, now I understand. It’s not like you yourselves made up this policy, so it’s hardly within your power to change it. Oh, wait — yes it is.
And no, I make no apology for being sarcastic to the customer service supervisor’s manager when I’ve got hours to kill in a miserable provincial airport.
Unfortunately, United needs to do a much better job about helping people understand how to use the vouchers.
Contrary to what the person thinks, this is not a paper ticket, and that isn’t why you have to go to the airport, etc. You have to get the voucher back to United at some point to apply the discount, and that’s what we’re talking about. (if they were smart they would give electronic vouchers, but that’s advanced for them…)
You do not have to go to the airport, and you do not have to pay more than you see online. You *can* go to the airport, but it is not necessary.
What you do is make a reservation online, or on the phone, and then “hold” it so that it receives a confirmation code. Then call and tell the agent you will be ticketing by mail, and send in your voucher by mail to the address given to you. You will not be charged a fee for anything and it will be taken care of in about a week.
yeah I swore off united about a year ago after dealing with their customer service and a lost bag. it was… ridiculous.
I’ve had both good and bad United experiences. The worst was when I was 17 and taking my first flight alone and had forgotten to bring extra money. I was stranded at O’Hare for 11 hours and my return flight was delayed by about 7 hours.
Recently, though, I had good UA customer service. I was having trouble with their website and called in to make a reservation with my flyer miles. The CSR was very helpful in scheduling a flight for me and, though she attempted to make me pay the fee for dealing with someone over the phone, once I calmly explained why I should not pay the fee (website not working properly), she waived it. Although, this may seem very pleasant because I had pretty low expectations.
I had a recent experience with an American Airlines voucher and it was marginally better than what’s described here. They allow you to select a flight online and place it on hold. You then have to call a CSR to actually complete the reservation.
Granted, I still don’t understand why you can’t complete the whole process online. Also, I was totally prepared for them to want to charge me $15 for making a reservation by phone which, thankfully, they didn’t do.
@JiminyChristmas:
That is exactly how it is supposed to work with United also. The guy here just didn’t get good information from the rep on the phone, who was mistaken in saying that you have to go to the airport. You don’t.
You do the exact same thing, place a reservation on hold, then mail in the coupon or go to the airport. Unfortunate that he got the wrong information, and unfortunate that he didn’t try to talk to someone else first before having to escalate it to this level of complaint. And unfortunate that United reps didn’t give him the right info in the first place.
@kepler11:
Thank you for this information!!!! You’ve made my blood pressure go down today.
At least they didn’t deny him compensation for the flight to Zurich because the weather was bad in Texas…
I’m also in United voucher hell at the moment. A flight I booked went up in price (exactly $125 for each of two tickets) as I was entering my credit card info, so I called and got the “it’s non-refundable” bit from the call center. It never showed up like that, they just added $250 to the final total. Called my credit card company and they weren’t willing to help. I even have screenshots of the price immediately after – it’s the lower one.
I was angry at this point and called United back to ask for a refund, thinking that they had some sort of accidental purchase policy or something – if I had seen the price increase I wouldn’t have clicked “buy”. I was going to go get it at orbitz, which was still showing the lower price. All of the sudden the guy is pointing out that my ticket couldn’t be refunded, but “I was lucky” and the fare had gone down already. What? It had a price protection policy and they “could offer a voucher for the difference”. All this in 10 minutes!
Him and his supervisor didn’t budge, and now I have these antiquated vouchers like other commenters.
So that is their little scam, just wanted to warn others of this. At the very least it will be a good souvenir when United goes out of business.
Tickets purchased through United on the phone or their website are fully refundable within 24 hours of purchase — actually one of their good policies that not every airline is so permissive about.
I fly international four times per year. United always has the best rates. Since I can be flexible with my dates, I have my agent put me on a United partner airline, Lufthansa to and from Europe. Still paying United rates, but getting nicer newer planes, greater comfort, and far superior customer service. Just be certain that the operator is not United. Lufthansa has always come through for me. If you have a United mileage account, transfer those miles to a Miles and More card, then use them on a dozen or more member airlines. Never tried to redeem a voucher, but it sounds like a PITA.
I think the United reps at Dulles Airport are particularly bad. For our honeymoon in Israel in July 2005, my husband and I booked a flight from Dulles to JFK, then JFK to Tel Aviv. When we got to Dulles, we asked where the international check-in counter was, and an agent pointed us to a line in which about 50 people were already waiting. We stood in this line for about 45 minutes, until, on my way back from the restroom, I saw a small sign with an arror pointing around the corner to “International Flights.” This ticket counter was not visiblefrom the line we had been told to wait in; the only indication anywhere in the front of the check-in hall was the small sign. Pissed off that we’d been told to wait in the wrong line and had wasted 45 minutes, we went around the corner and explained the situation to the guy at the international check-in, who for some reason was extremely rude and proceeded to lecture us for five minutes, saying it was our fault for not being at the right counter. We made it clear, politely, that we’d been told to be there by one of their agents, and asked if we could get a voucher to go to the front of the security line as our flight would be leaving soon and our delay was their error. The agent grunted and waved us away. We took this as a simple, rude “no.” When we got to the security line, though, it became clear that this guy had flagged us for a security check, with no reason for doing so. Needless to say, after waiting about an hour in the security line, enduring the 15-minute check, and the 45 minutes checking in, we missed our flight to JFK. At the gate, we explained the situation to the agent, who was sympathetic, but said the only flight she had to the NY-NJ area that would allow us time to make our Israel flight was to Newark, an hour away from JFK. After some discussion, we had her move us to the Newark flight, on the condition that United would give us vouchers for a cab ride to JFK. We received confirmation from her on the vouchers, but once we landed in Newark, lo and behold, there were no vouchers reserved for us. We argued for several minutes with the agents there, giving them the Dulles gate agent’s name, before they eventually relented, making it clear that they thought we were making the whole thing up to get a freebie. Sorry this was so long, but the point is, United is unapologetically awful, especially in Dulles.
Here’s a good one…I just travelled to Rochester NY from Salt Lake City, Utah via Chicago on July 4th on United. I setup my reservations via Travelocity a couple months back and made it clear I was in a wheelchair (I have no legs below the knees). I would need an aisle chair to get me in and out of the plane. As an aside, my experience flying out to Salt Lake on June 28 with Delta/Northwest was perfect-no issues.
Getting on board in Salt Lake–no problem. Landed on-time in Chicago at 5pm–noone showed to help me. We waited 15 minutes after the plane was deboarded-no sign of any assistance. The flight attendant called the people involved–still nothing.
I ended up crawling out of the plane on my own power and down the boarding ramp to the concourse where I got into my wheelchair (which was waiting) with the assistance of the main stewardess. They then voluntarily pushed me to my next gate and then had to run for their next flight (I did tip them for the assistance). The next gate person called a Concierge who listened to my experience and wrote down all the information saying I’d be contacted. She said I’d be put in First Class for the flight to Rochester and would be boarded 10 minutes before anyone else. Problem is noone (again) showed up with an Aisle chair to assist me until after the first 4 rows of coach were filled. I have now filed a complaint with Travelocity and have been told they will contact me. I’m not holding my breath.
I was flying on UA in the middle of spring break — early morning flight from the East Coast, connecting on the West Coast home overnight before heading out on an early flight the next morning to Asia. (Crazy work schedule.) Not much room for error. I’m at the airport super early for my 9:30 a.m. departure and the ticket counter person hurriedly says “are you checking that bag or can you carry it on?” I said either. He asked if I minded running a little. Puzzled and coffee-deprived, I said not really, but why. He said come with me, I’ll explain.
Long story short, as he was asking these questions he’d moved me to an earlier flight and got me thru security and to the gate (used a radio, got someone else to help get me to the gate. Turns out my 9:30 flight had equipment problems and he was getting me on the 7:15 so I’d make my connection.
To this day, I don’t know whether he knew about my next-day flight or was just being nice. I was flying on a coach ticket I’d upgraded with miles. And tho I’m a Premier member, I wasn’t Executive Premier that year. I don’t know either how we got from his counter to the gate in less than 10 minutes. But I had my biz class seat, I made my connection, I got home and did my laundry and battled jetlag to leave the house at 4 a.m. for my next trip. I checked later and had I been kept on that original flight, I would indeed have missed my transpac connection.
So while there are lemons out there, by and large my experience with United has been positive. We let nearly 200k DL miles rot because of several terrible experiences; have consciously avoided that carrier for 13 years now.