Traveling on an award ticket to MSY this weekend. I booked the ticket a good bit in advance as I always do for our NYE trip. I knew that in the interim, the schedules would change.
And they did. My 1:45 layover was whittled down to less than an hour as each time the schedule changes, UA invariably gives me a connection with a shorter layover.
For months I have been calling and asking them if I could move to a later connecting flight at IAH. And all I get is the staff telling that its a legal connection and they have to charge me more miles since there isn't any Saver availability for the later flight. Being a legal connection doesn't change my view that 58 minutes is a stupid connection in winter over the holidays. I sent UA an email with my problem and they just told me that they will take care of me if I misconnect.
So earlier this week, I decided to call again with my newly minted gold status. Who knows? Maybe it matters. I explain that weather is hitting PHL and my short connection makes me nervous. The agent tells me that she thinks she can do something and gets me on a later flight.
Lo and behold, my outbound from PHL is an hour and change late. Instead of having a pissed off traveler standing by on various aircraft, they have a happy traveler relaxing in the UC. I'm just perplexed as to how UA thinks making me keep calling to get this done is good business. All it took was to move my connection back where it was when I booked the ticket.
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Ditto
UA wouldn't change my flight for one connecting a bit later either. Flights ended up canceling. Though UA stormwalled me, I'm glad to have made back up plans - otherwise alternate flights weren't available until days after Christmas.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Often1
And one less reason for a UA pax to purchase a changeable fare.
Awards ARE changeable fares - with no fee - regardless of status (outside 21 days as this apparently was, and subject to availability).
Even so, this is a pointless statement. The reason for the change was UA changing flights on him, not the OP wanting to take a different flight than he originally booked.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by docbert
Awards ARE changeable fares - with no fee - regardless of status (outside 21 days as this apparently was, and subject to availability).
Even so, this is a pointless statement. The reason for the change was UA changing flights on him, not the OP wanting to take a different flight than he originally booked.
But you can only change a saver award ticket to another flight for which saver award buckets exist.
It's all well and good that we want to help United out by helping ourselves, re-booking to give ourselves a better chance of making our connections. But it's a crap-shoot because during irrops, the flight we would have ourselves re-booked onto might itself have issues, resulting in multiple re-bookings on the same itin. Perhaps an argument can be made for sorting things out once, in semi-real-time, on the day things are going south? I understand this flies in the face of the obvious, that we at FT know more about running an airline than United.
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It's not about trying to get a special deal or game the system by booking one thing and scamming my way into something else. Although I'm sure many FTers excel in that sort of thing.
I booked a flight with a certain schedule that gives me a decent chance of making a connection. It really shouldn't be an issue to get that back if UA changes the schedule on me.
Could any flight blow up in my face and result in problems? Sure. But neither I nor the airline can control that. All I can control is booking a flight that gives me a better shot. Which I did, until UA changed it.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_edward_p
It's not about trying to get a special deal or game the system by booking one thing and scamming my way into something else. Although I'm sure many FTers excel in that sort of thing.
I booked a flight with a certain schedule that gives me a decent chance of making a connection. It really shouldn't be an issue to get that back if UA changes the schedule on me.
Could any flight blow up in my face and result in problems? Sure. But neither I nor the airline can control that. All I can control is booking a flight that gives me a better shot. Which I did, until UA changed it.
United guarantees you a flight that won't violate minimum connect time, nothing beyond that. There are other rules that tell you how much United can change flight times before allowing you to cancel the ticket or get a freebie SDC. From what I can tell, neither one applies.
If the airline were a different industry, one in which yield management didn't produce a system in which there is no set value for a seat, things would be different. But that's not the way it works, and while your request is certainly reasonable on its face, it could just as easily be used by someone to get onto a flight that wasn't allowed under the ticket they purchased or bought with miles.
Aside from that, when things have gone really south, I haven't had problems getting onto any flight to my destination that had an available seat, just by walking up to the gate. Re-booking might be good for temporary peace of mind, but in the end, it's the plane at the gate with a seat that's been the most-important thing, and United's always gotten me onto that plane. The re-booked flight, during irrops, is less-dependable than the next-flight out.
(Where United fails, big-time, is allowing me to switch my return from SFO to SJC when SFO is paralyzed by foul weather. I've seen flights leave for SJC half-empty while there are huge crowds waiting for the next flight to SFO, most of whom won't get on. Why?)
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And one less reason for a UA pax to purchase a changeable fare.
I don't know any pax who purchase changeable revenue fares who stop before clicking "purchase" and contemplate what other pax on changeable mileage tickets are doing.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_edward_p
I'm just perplexed as to how UA thinks making me keep calling to get this done is good business. All it took was to move my connection back where it was when I booked the ticket.
CO has long used an insurance company model towards dealing with its customers -- deny, deny, deny, and then only deal with the most squeaky ones, eliminating the liability of the majority of customers along the way.
I hate my insurance company, and this is also the same relationship CO chooses to have with its frequent customers.
__________________ The world's leading airline should have the world's leading change fee.
You shouldn't really blame the individual you're talking to for their unwillingness to provide customer service. IMO, most would prefer to provide it rather than constantly arguing with passengers and denying their requests. However, the majority of airline policies make it impossible for them to do that. There is very little, if any, "empowerment" for a front line airline employee.
You shouldn't really blame the individual you're talking to for their unwillingness to provide customer service. IMO, most would prefer to provide it rather than constantly arguing with passengers and denying their requests. However, the majority of airline policies make it impossible for them to do that. There is very little, if any, "empowerment" for a front line airline employee.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by azstar
You shouldn't really blame the individual you're talking to for their unwillingness to provide customer service. IMO, most would prefer to provide it rather than constantly arguing with passengers and denying their requests. However, the majority of airline policies make it impossible for them to do that. There is very little, if any, "empowerment" for a front line airline employee.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_edward_p
Traveling on an award ticket to MSY this weekend. I booked the ticket a good bit in advance as I always do for our NYE trip. I knew that in the interim, the schedules would change.
And they did. My 1:45 layover was whittled down to less than an hour as each time the schedule changes, UA invariably gives me a connection with a shorter layover.
For months I have been calling and asking them if I could move to a later connecting flight at IAH. And all I get is the staff telling that its a legal connection and they have to charge me more miles since there isn't any Saver availability for the later flight. Being a legal connection doesn't change my view that 58 minutes is a stupid connection in winter over the holidays. I sent UA an email with my problem and they just told me that they will take care of me if I misconnect.
So earlier this week, I decided to call again with my newly minted gold status. Who knows? Maybe it matters. I explain that weather is hitting PHL and my short connection makes me nervous. The agent tells me that she thinks she can do something and gets me on a later flight.
Lo and behold, my outbound from PHL is an hour and change late. Instead of having a pissed off traveler standing by on various aircraft, they have a happy traveler relaxing in the UC. I'm just perplexed as to how UA thinks making me keep calling to get this done is good business. All it took was to move my connection back where it was when I booked the ticket.
As a brilliant frequent flyer once stated: "it's in the code--UA=UnderAchiever." Don't expect great ideas from UA, let alone decent levels of customer service. UA's management seems convinced that they can run a global airline like a regional Texas-based airline.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by UA-NYC
Clearly the case now, but not so IMO before 3/3
Things are different, but the level of help I've received has not diminished. Some of the issue isn't just with SHARES, and agents that are learning the ropes, but also us. We know how things used to work, and come at things from that perspective. To some extent, we need re-training ourselves. We had years of experience with how the prior system worked. We knew its capabilities (not its inner workings, but what it could do) almost as well as UA employees. SHARES is different. We focus on the deficiencies compared to the old days, but there are likely things SHARES can do better, and other things SHARES can do differently but still achieve acceptable results. And some things where it will suck.
When we changed our computer point-of-sale system at the shop, it took months before people stopped complaining about how it did this thing or that thing worse than the prior system. It was the only thing staff talked about. Then we started learning about the cool stuff it could do, and realized it can really help us. Now that we've had it for a couple years, we think it sucks again because we're so used to it that we take for granted the cool stuff it can do and focus on little things that annoy us.
I'm not excusing some seriously-bad stuff I've read about here! Just saying that it's not been terrible all the time for all of us. There is hope.
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