chrix

Dear FlyerTalk,

It has been a long time since I have sought the advice of this esteemed group, but today felt like one of those days. Thank you in advance!

A friend and I had a SFO-SJD flight this morning; we arrived at SFO T-70 minutes and saw an agent to check in at T-66 minutes. After quite a bit of process (~10 min) we were told that check-in had closed early and the flight had gone to gate control before we arrived. The flight was oversold and the gate had already given away our seats. Yikes.

We were dumbfounded and had a bit of an argument with the supervisor, telling him 'but we were on time!'. He initially denied that the flight had been closed early and kept saying 'we closed at 60 minutes and you weren't here'. The not-so-nice agent who had in fact closed the flight early waved her highlighter at us and also denied it.

The nice-but-junior-agent that was checking us in was giving us a knowing look but didn't seem willing to stand up for us to her boss. It so happened that a senior agent had seen us arrive and noted the time when we checked in as she knew it was coming up on T-60. I pleaded with her and she went back to the supervisor to tell him the truth. The supervisor then apologized, issued us a meal voucher + $200 courtesy travel vouchers, and "Delay Verification" certificates signed as "Early Gate Control".

All other flights (including AS/US/etc) were oversold today, so we were given the option of a black-eye SFO-IAH-SJD but instead rebooked on the same flight tomorrow, 24 hours later.

I realized on the way home that this situation is essentially the same as an involuntary denied boarding scenario, even though we never made it to the gate - we followed the rules and were told we could not get on the flight due to overbooking. Obviously compensation is much higher in that scenario; from what I've researched it is a $1300 *check* per ticket (given a ~$400 base fare), probably minus the $200 vouchers we've received.

Is this a reasonable ask? What is the best way for me to get in touch with the right person at United for me to ask for this? Snail mail I suppose?

Thanks so much,
Chrix

PS - Extra annoying part: I had secured a mobile boarding pass successfully (which I was told was a bug and it wouldn't have worked due to lack of passport check) but my friend hadn't - the United app told him when he tried to check in online on the drive to SFO that he had to do it in person. We would have shown up earlier if we'd known we couldn't use the mobile boarding passes...