HKChicago

So I accidentally woke up at 9AM today for my 10:30AM flight HKG-EWR-ORD. I called and asked for the next available flight, was told that next day would be a total of $715 including $150 penalty. I balked at that and asked for something cheaper, not necessarily next available but maybe just the same flight next day. Then he offered me $630 total. I had meanwhile quickly gotten on the website, and checked the options to switch to next day. Plenty of availability for the next day's flight at a fare $320 higher than my purchased fare. I clicked on that and got a page saying that the change would cost the fare difference plus $0 ("waived") change fee. Meanwhile the guy on the phone still couldn't find anything less than $630, including a $150 penalty, even though I was telling him the flights and fare codes, he said no availability. I didn't even bother to ask why he was charging me a penalty, and the website not, as I figured this was probably just another computer glitch. Unfortunately, when I clicked the final button to charge my card and pay for the flight change online, I ran into yet another problem, an error page giving saying please call United.

Also, strangely, even though I clicked on the same HKG-EWR-ORD routing, the change confirmation page came up as HKG-SFO-ORD. That was no big problem with me, I was kind of looking forward to trying UA116 pmCO business first (I had a confirmed GPU) but I save a little time in the air, whatever - just another way that the website seemed to be malfunctioning.

Agent connected me to web support saying he could not find the fares I was talking about in his system. I told the story to Web Support guy as a very simple story of "I am getting xyz error message while booking a flight change." He immediately asked if the system was showing any change fee, and I told him no, it's showing zero. He seemed to be expecting this, saying OK sir, in that case if the system is waiving the change fee I can waive it also, the total charge to you will be $293 (actually less than the website quoted). He changed it and confirmed my GPU on the new routing, great..

This whole thing really only took only about 8-10 minutes on the phone+computer, an hour and a half before my flight while lying in bed. Service was great (I'm certainly not complaining) but holy cow these people really need a better computer system. For one of the world's largest companies to be quoting three different prices, with no two out of three people able to replicate the same behavior on the system, is just remarkable. For people that are not at a computer trying to negotiate this, and/or not technologically proficient, must be a mess. I do some low level programming myself, in far less complicated systems, and I wonder if this is one of those stories where the system has just become so complex, with so many workarounds, that it has essentially become unfixable, kind of like Windows. But Windows is an unfixable mess because it has to interface with tens of thousands of third-party devices, provide backward compatibility to tens of thousands of software packages, etc. The United IT system managers have no such excuse: They are dealing with a few dozen to at maximum a few hundred external interfaces, and generally a much simpler task. It strikes me that this really must be a management problem, because competent technology managers should be able to have SHARES fixed rather quickly. They just need to hire some really smart process people and get the darn thing fixed and/or chuck it and start over.