ozstamps

I've been active on this forum for years more than any of the previous posters.

I've seen scores of UA based posters here, on and off over those 8 years.

Through the Chapter 11 era, and through the boom times.

FA's, pilots, gate agents, mechanics, ramp agents, CS folks, MP agents ... the whole gamut.

Who have imparted much superb first hand info. ^ ^

I've had dinners with many of them at FT Doos and events. Some great folks.

Sadly few seem to hang around long, possibly due to the thought they'll get sprung by management one day.

Yes UA should have an 'official' person here. More now than ever.

Starwood won the Freddie's near every year since they had the Starwood Lurker on wages.

William was popular here despite doing an unpopular job, and in a narrow Forum from where he did not venture out from too much.

He ran for Talk Board here and got a HUGE vote. I think it was the same year I ran, but whenever it was, his vote was way ahead of the pack IIRC.

So doing a tough job still got him a ton of member respect.

And did a LOT of good for Starwood too is my guess. @:-)

Glen

spin88

in my work i once ran accross an interesting fact-oid, which is that for every customer who complains and takes the time to write, 18 just walk away. the figures were for the insurance industry (and were post internet being as large as it is, so may be outdated now) and amazingly the company who did the study spread it throughout the company as part of complaint handeling training saying... we spend $y to get each customer, and if a customer leaves and writes a complaint it means that likely 18 folks have also left, and spending $y x 18 to replace them is very very very expensive, so deal with each complaint as an early warning, don't blow it off.

This forum is a super charged version of the complaint letter, and is an early warning system, one that does not require the company to answer, just listen, and that is (or should be) terribly valuable to UA.

A board will tend to build on itself if left with no response, and negatives will proliferate, so it is always good to see someone from the company who (out of interest, commonality, etc) is willing to devote time to providing a different perspective. I for one am always respectful and find the information valuable. They like some of us want to see UA do well.

Given that the alternative is to let litterally hundreads of their best customers stew at any one time, UA is well served by its employees who take enough interest in their jobs and company to "unofficially" represent it.

I hope that UA management is not so stupid as to try to restrict posting or chastise folks for doing so.

777-DCA

The only thing hurting United's reputation on FT is United itself.

Mike Jacoubowsky

I don't think it would be wise for UA to consider having someone official post here without having absolutely firm ground rules for what he/she could... and could not... do.

Think about it. All the questions about how much compensation for a broken leg rest, having to explain that sorry, you're a 1P so you don't get the same attention a 1K gets, no, we don't have an obligation to get you home before the last train leaves, yada yada yada.

A typical morning on FT might be enough to fill an entire week's worth of research for a single UA employee. Where would they draw the line? You just randomly pick who to help and who to ignore?

I don't think Triage would work well (for UA) on FT. The examples of other forums with dedicated company employees (CO and Starwood) are companies that haven't... er... deteriorated to the degree that United has. Plus, they might have established a presence during relatively-good times, which helps to give credibility.

I'm not saying it can't be done. I'm just saying that it would have to have such narrowly-defined parameters that I think a lot of people here would be unhappy, and if the general feeling from any sort of experiment is that the PR looks to be more negative than positive (because people weren't happy with the limits to what could be discussed, and/or weren't pleased that a real live person still couldn't accomplish what obviously needed to be done)... well I think the plug would be pulled quite rapidly.

Of course, a quick look at the anti-Tilton comments alone would be enough to convince all but the thickest-skinned upper management that this is not a safe place to be.

I think the best UA could do would be to issue a statement directly to FT, explaining that they place the highest value on comments made by their best customers, and appreciate the fact that such comments are often forwarded from FT to appropriate management at UA for review. But they would add that, unfortunately, it's just not practical at this time to have an on-line presence on FT where the expectation would be that solutions would be provided that might be at odds with what UA is already doing through its normal customer service channels, and that it makes more sense to devote all possible efforts to those existing channels.

UA could also provide a brutally-honest appraisal of where the airline currently stands and how it plans to emerge as a more profitable and more reliable airline. People still respect that sort of thing.

ozstamps

Starwood Lurker has done that for many years.

It is not hard, and a senior person needs only refer members to the existing printed rules relating to such issues.

Elite Status Benefits?

Sure it is all clearly outlined in great detail here:

http://www.united.com/page/middlepag...3,1159,00.html

Want more Bennies - fly more.

That is logic no FT'er will argue with.

Glen

cstead

Right. There's no reason compensation should be determined on a case-by-case basis for a lot of these things. Every person who has their seat broken on a 5000+ mile flight gets X, 4999 miles and below gets Y. UA Lurker would be able to quickly establish these, cutting down on all of those compensation threads.

The biggest problem with a UA Lurker right now, is that we would want UA Lurker to serve as a taddle-tale. Every time we have horrible service, and a subpar crew, or an abusive GA, or a run in with a poor RCC agent, we would run to UA Lurker (since quite frankly there's so little we can right now). I can't imagine that would be very good for UA Lurker's morale ratting out fellow employees, nor would it make it a very popular or fun job at UA.

Like Mike pointed out, UA has deteriorated to the point where triage just isn't practical. And just like Mike, I would be satisfied for a first step if someone like Barbara Higgins, the ex-Disney VP who was supposed to really "shake things up" at UA, made a statement to us that they at least read FT and have even the slightest understanding of the problems that exist. Then again, after GT yelled at the FTer who attended the Annual Meeting, I'm almost 100% sure they view us as the enemy.

ozstamps

I do not think that is how Starwood Lurker works/worked.

AFAIK he would simply offer you the snail mail or email address for the correct area to complain to and would not generally get involved in that stuff.

Smart.

UA Senior staffers certainly do read FT.

We have had senior FT VP's here for live chat on FT in the past.

THAT was fun.
.

bhmlurker

I'm mixed as to whether an official presence will do much good. It's akin to sending one person to a Burmese village after the cyclone empty handed. Short of actually providing enough resources to permanently fix the problem, the people will just get angry and eventually mob the representative, tearing him limb to limb. That is exactly what happened at DL forum, where the official rep only came on to parrot a few lines and then retreat.

Any official engagement by UA has to be done willfully and with sufficient resources to back it up. Because of this, I'm not sure UA can or has the will to send an official rep. Which of course supports the argument for unofficial reps who act professionally (thus far all have been).

haddon90

i think eventually UA will get with the program, and realize that some of their best customers use FT. the only thing i wonder is, how does management discover the identity of a poster on FT?

chitownflyer

UnitedSkies, I have gained useful information from your many posts througout the years here on Flyertalk, and I wish you a good future in your next employment position. In what position and field did you work at United?

Ocn Vw 1K

My perception from having engaged with UA mgt. at last year's FT SFO Mega-Do, is, as UnitedSkies suggests in post #2: UA wants to take a "content-neutral" approach and does not want to appear to favor any one outlet or type of medium. So its corporate culture is to centralize all statements to the media through its corporate communications office, and have all customer dialogue go through its customer service office. We all know of many models, from oft-cited Starwood to even the California Highway Patrol, which decentralize communications to outlets. But so long as UA stands by its model, entreaties for a FT representative will be met with silence.

One practical issue if UA ever changes its focus, is the expectations, role and workload of an official rep. on this forum. Depending on your expectations, such a person could be overwhelmed handling everything from lost bags in BKK to missing mileage credit in MHT.

GregoryGardner

I think UA and other folks who dispute the value of having UA employees post here should all read the Cluetrain Manifesto. This is a serious treatise which discusses exactly this sort of thing. The value UA posters bring to FT is a human face to the corporation.

I can't stand the corporate dumb-speak, which we all know is just pure pablum. Not to pick on Mike, but we all know that statements like We place the highest value on comments are just not true. 100% not true. UA categorically does not place the highest value on comments, nor should they. They place the highest value on safety and revenue. I would love to see UA get to a place where they are more consistently honest with us, their customers. I realize this means that sometimes I get bad news, and that's OK. And one of the biggest benefits of having real human beings on FT is this human, truthful dialog, not corporate press-release speak.

Trulyblues

I don't think they should.

IMO the value to UA in a forum like this is getting a wider view of the playing field than individual feedback - who we are individually is irrelevant, because UA wouldn't be here to deal with our individual issues...we already have avenues to go through to address those even though we might not like them!

One thing that I would anticipate is that if there was a formal UA presence, we would see more people providing constructive feedback (this is the problem I had, and here is how the situation could have been handled better). Many of us vent here because United doesn't seem to give a rip about listening to people individually, and appears to have done a terrible job of taking individual feedback and condensing it into an actionable plan.

I 100% agree with the comments made by others about there being huge value in the customers who are complaining. It's true in many areas of life - when someone is communicating unhappiness it is because they care about being a part of something better.

livitup

William absolutley does get involved in individual situations. He has directly contacted hotels to reinforce policy several times, especially regarding the guaranteed late check-out benefit for SPG Gold and Plats, a benefit generally misunderstood or disregarded by the individual properties.

haddon90

there must be some value if continental is doing it. a UA person for this board shoudn't be one to address issues of bad service from an agent. it's for ideas, and how things can be improved. it's called customer service. instead of having someone here, UA could have a forum for their GS members. i've never really had any glaring problems with the way UA does things, but i'm not a person that spends thousands of dollards on UA. if UA really wants to be a premium carrier (as it states it wants to be), then who better to listen to then the people that spend the most amount of $$$ with you?