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Consolidated Thread to Post Your UA Website Experiences/Complaints

Consolidated Thread to Post Your UA Website Experiences/Complaints

 
Old Dec 24, 2001, 12:16 pm
  #1  
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Consolidated Thread to Post Your UA Website Experiences/Complaints

After discussion among the moderators, we'd like to offer this thread as a one-stop-shopping venue for posting your complaints/observations about United's website rather than starting new threads. As we have time, current threads will be merged into this one. As you experience new "joys" of United's website, please post them here, instead of starting a new thread.

Perhaps this might even make it more likely that UA might notice?

cblaisd
and on behalf of Moderator2 and squeaker
Moderators, United

Note: In an ongoing effort to organize this thread and help you locate posible solutions to problems faster, we will be breaking this thread into individual ones for specific united.com problems and providing the links here. Please be patient as it will take a while. -l'etoile

Complaint posts (no specific problems/solutions in this thread) from 2005 can now be found here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=696194

United.com problems and workarounds for Comcast subscribers: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=700262 (I know there is more to add to this thread, but it seems to have the helpful info in it for now.)

OLCI: We are unable to locate an electronic ticket (thread gives possible problem and solution)
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=699630

Ual.com Error500/Hypertext transfer protocol (this gives some possible suggestions, but mostly complaints ...if anyone figures out a solution, please post it!)
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=714205

United.com wish list
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=699636

Last edited by l etoile; Jul 14, 2007 at 4:50 pm
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 11:33 am
  #2  
 
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Exclamation Post your United.com problems here

I have been on this board long enough to know that there are at least a thousand threads on problems with the United.com website. I figure that if we list them all in one place, it will help United realize that I am not the only one who experiences these problems and serve as a workplan for them if they are really too lazy to come up with one themselves.

Lets limit posts in this thread to poblems we have encountered or processes that could be improved. Lets stay away from commenting on each other's posts. I will update this main thread as necessary.

Thanks!

Randomman


- Overall, the site is down about twenty percent of the time. This means that either the home page does not load at all, the site times-out during log-on, or specific features such as My Itineraries are unavailable.

- Searching for flights defaults to Search by Price, not Search by Schedule which makes much more sense.

- The only way to check available seats on a flight is to create a sample reservation, which takes about 5-10 minutes. Seat maps should be easily available from the main page.

- Seats can not be changed on-line.

- Only 500-mile upgrades can be requested online. Upgrade requests with SWU's or CR-1's must be called in.

- Upgrades can not be requested online for itineraries not booked on the United website.

- The pricing engine can not search fares by fare basis (i.e., F,C,Y,B,M,H,Q,V, etc.) even though fare bases are important to many customers for various reasons.

- No confirmation is provided after registering for promotions; Mileage Plus notoriously denies that people have registered for promotions when miles/certificates/upgrades/etc are due.

- The multi-city function requires input of all ground travel, adding to the time required to book such itineraries.

- Upgrade availability is not available.

- Award travel for Star Alliance carriers can not be searched or booked online.

- Award availability on United is inconsistent. Many times, a phone call will result in Saver Award bookings when United.com shows no availability.

- Search by schedule will not show the maximum 20 flight options, but rather limit options based on the time entered in the search function.

- Data should be preserved. Pressing Back or starting a new search should not delete settings such as the dates and city pairs.

- Infinite redirection loops are common.

- My Itineraries is often very slow or completely unavailable, resulting in errors.

- My Itineraries rarely shows segments where an upgrade is waitlisted.

- The flight search function often shows non-UA flights before UA flights, and sometimes offers no UA options at all.

- The ability to confirm schedule changes online should be added. The current mandatory phone call is tedious.

- It may not be possible to book a First/Business Class ticket if the flight originates or terminates in a city where First/Business class does not exist.



Keep them coming...

Last edited by randomman; Sep 14, 2004 at 5:36 pm
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 1:26 pm
  #3  
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Here's a perennial FT favorite deficiency of the site:
7) The pricing engine does not display fares by fare basis (i.e., F,C,Y,B,M,H,Q,V, etc.) even though fare bases are important to many customers for many reasons.
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 1:51 pm
  #4  
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I hope you checked with Randy to be sure his servers have a enough space to support such a thread.
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 2:43 pm
  #5  
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The site is very flaky when run on standards-compliant web browsers (i.e. non-MSIE). In particular
  1. there are many locations where the gets into infinite redirection loops.
  2. online check-in does not work at all with Netscape.
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 3:00 pm
  #6  
 
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0% success rate from brazil last week....
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 5:51 pm
  #7  
 
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Unhappy

1. Multi-city makes you input your ground travel. A better model is just to allow From/To, From/To, From/To, etc. instead of From/To/To/To/To...

2. Showing flight upgrade eligibility is inconsistent.

3. Even though we may ask for up to 20 flights to be displayed by schedule, we often have to know flight time and enter it to get certain flights to show up. A search by schedule should show all flights available.
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 5:56 pm
  #8  
 
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Originally Posted by flyiad
1. Multi-city makes you input your ground travel. A better model is just to allow From/To, From/To, From/To, etc. instead of From/To/To/To/To...

2. Showing flight upgrade eligibility is inconsistent.

3. Even though we may ask for up to 20 flights to be displayed by schedule, we often have to know flight time and enter it to get certain flights to show up. A search by schedule should show all flights available.
Not bad for a first post!

To add, why have a multipule segment area if all you get is "Unable to fare this request"
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 6:21 pm
  #9  
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United Airlines

ERR NO: ENG-AM-027
Booking In Process

Your reservation is being processed. Please stand by for verification.

> No wonder the company is in dire straits. Paying customers cannot make bookings on their website! Nothing new, though.
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 6:46 pm
  #10  
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Originally Posted by randomman
1) The site is down about twenty percent of the time. This means that either the home page does not load at all, the site times-out during log-on, or specific features such as My Itineraries time-out.
I'm not sure how you came up with the 20% number but my experience is not even close. Certainly it is not up 100% of the time, but it is up more than 80% of the time. Do any of us have any data to support that the UA web site is significantly bad in this area as compared to the rest?

Originally Posted by randomman
2) The E-Upgrade Summary has not worked in two months.
I've rarely experienced it not working.

Originally Posted by randomman
3) Searching for flights defaults to Search by Price, not Search by Schedule which makes much more sense.
I agree

Originally Posted by randomman
4) The only way to check available seats on a flight is to create a sample reservation, which takes about 5-10 minutes.
Again, you're greatly overstating the time; it takes me 2-3 minutes tops.

Originally Posted by randomman
5) Seats can not be changed on-line.
I agree

6) Only 500-mile upgrades can be requested online. Upgrade requests with SWU's or CR-1's must be called in.
I agree.
Originally Posted by randomman
7) The pricing engine can not search fares by fare basis (i.e., F,C,Y,B,M,H,Q,V, etc.) even though fare bases are important to many customers for various reasons.
I'm sure there are some who care about this just as I am sure there are other, myself included, who don't care.
Originally Posted by randomman
8) No confirmation is provided after registering for promotions.
I'm not sure what you mean by confirmation as when I register it thanks me for registering; I take that as confirmation. Perhaps you are looking for an email confirmation?
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 7:12 pm
  #11  
 
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Originally Posted by flyiad
3. Even though we may ask for up to 20 flights to be displayed by schedule, we often have to know flight time and enter it to get certain flights to show up. A search by schedule should show all flights available.
1. I would rather see ALL flights with any not available flagged in some way.

2. Dates should be persistent, i.e. entered values should be preserved.

3. There should be a distinction between "new search" and "edit current search" and try it again.

4. View seat map without having to ticket.

5. For promotions, I would like to be able to see what I have already registered for.

Plus most of what has already been listed.

Last edited by laptop; Jul 8, 2004 at 7:18 pm
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Old Jul 8, 2004, 9:55 pm
  #12  
 
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For what it's worth, we might try here to distinguish between "problems" and "wish list features." Not that I disagree with any of the wish list items posted so far (e.g., change seat assignments), but I for one, would like the site to walk before it runs (so to speak)--so things like reliability and bugs are more important, maybe?

Anyway, my biggest bug not mentioned so far is that certain links (most notoriously, the "Search for flights" link in the left sidebar) will reset your flight searching preferences (such as "advanced" mode), requiring you to close the browser and start all over to get those preferences back.

I second the "infinite loop" comment -- lord help us if anyone understands the relationship between united.com, itn.net, and ua2go.com, all of which service the web site at one point or another.
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Old Jul 9, 2004, 7:54 am
  #13  
 
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Originally Posted by Stanford_1K
I second the "infinite loop" comment -- lord help us if anyone understands the relationship between united.com, itn.net, and ua2go.com, all of which service the web site at one point or another.
Here is my understanding of the infinite loop problem. It relates to the cookie(s) that is/are set when you login, and the timeout period for a login.

If you login, and then don't actively use the site for some period of time, a timeout occurs and you have to login again. For pages that are on ua2go.com (such as itineraries and upgrade summary), this creates some kind of unresolvable problem that appears as an infinite loop and finally an error message. The only solution is to close the browser (close all instances of the browser), which erases the cookie(s).

I use Mozilla as my browser for all web sites except united.com, and I use MSIE solely for united.com, and I close MSIE and then reopen it whenever I encounter the timeout.
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Old Jul 9, 2004, 8:48 am
  #14  
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Originally Posted by redburgundy
The only solution is to close the browser (close all instances of the browser), which erases the cookie(s).
Another solution is to go to the MP summary page and log out. Then go to the home page and log back in.
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Old Jul 9, 2004, 8:50 am
  #15  
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Thumbs down United has a website???

I had no idea....

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