Originally Posted by
mherdeg
Let us know what you hear back from the DoT. It sounds like the salient issues are that (1) you were denied a seat in the cabin you had paid for in non-compliance with UA's published rules for IDBs and (2) you were asked to fraudulently sign a "volunteer form" and told you would otherwise be unable to board the plane.
Did IAH-PTY work out okay?
This is not a voluntary downgrade. You are owed a cash refund of the fare difference from Z to the lowest available coach fare at time of purchase (good luck figuring that out) and UA should be offering additional goodwill, at a minimum the amount spelled out in GG OVS DOWNGRADE for a 1600-mile flight.
I'm really glad to hear you made it onto your flight at SFO! I'm a bit surprised that the SFO agents couldn't / wouldn't issue you a gate pass (vs. begging the TSA to let you through with a boarding pass with no barcode). It sounds like there were several service delivery failures there.
Will do regarding DOT.
You captured the two salient issues.
Besides that, is a page worth of pathetic operational failures. But, that's not unusual. As explained in my post, I prepared to the maximum possible level for those - even to the point of traveling with more than a full day to spare.
We'll see what happens at IAH. In flight now. Since I'll be facing up against sCO there, I doubt they'll even let me fly. A this point, I'm prepared to buy a ticket on AA and take them to court if need be. Should have just taken them up on that status match offer last year.
The supervisor did issue a downgrade compensation ticket. It "might" be worth "up to" $500 on "selected" UA flights. Why did he issue me downgrade compensation when the other agent said I never even had a seat in F to begin with? I've never used one of those before but if it's like everything else, it'll be worthless, I'll get caught up in one trap or another trying to use it.
And, yes, while he was pleading with the TSA to let me get to my flight, he did have another agent working on a process to issue a gate pass. But, that process took longer than the TSA escalation process, and TSA said "yes" faster.