Originally Posted by
jgilbs
Hey Guys,
Thought I would ask the forum about an infuriating situation I had last week. I was traveling to SLC with my fiancee. Due to work reasons, I booked her ticket first, and mine the next day after I confirmed with my work when I would be flying to the client location. She was booked under my account, but since the itinerary wasn't with me, she wasn't assigned Premier Access.
Once I noticed this, I called up United, and the agent was able to move her seats into Economy Plus with me. I was told she should be able to check bags for free, but that would be taken care of at the airport.
So a few days later, I got to the airport, checked my bags (with an Airserv rep - didnt notice he wasnt United), and then was told to talk to Customer Service about my fiancees bags. They were rude, unhelpful, and acted like I was trying to scam the airline (their tone made it sound like I stealing money from them personally). I told the Customer Service Rep that she was traveling with me on the same flight (and standing right next to me), and we have traveled with free bags several times. The rep claimed that I was a liar, and she has been doing that 25 years and never heard of such a thing. I dont want to go into all the details, but suffice it to say, the agents were very rude and unhelpful. Through all of this, I was very polite, realizing yelling at them wont get my way.
I called United, tried to have them combine itineraries, they said they did, and it should be fine. Apparently they only added a note that we were traveling, which was not good enough for the agent. At this point, 45 mins of back and forth between the airport folks, and United call center had passed, and I was about to be late for my flight. I paid the fee, and just decided if I was in the right, I could just file a chargeback.
So who was right here? Do the Customer Service Agents have the ability to override the itinerary when we are clearly together? Or am I wrong for not having the tickets combined to begin with? I guess I normally would let this go, but the experience was so bad (I was told that as a gold member, I should "know better" and something about a PNR (I have no idea what she was talking about)), and the agents were so rude. I got the impression that I somehow personally offended them, and that they were just refusing to help me in any way, despite their ability to do so.
PNR stands for Passenger Name Record. It's basically the record of the reservation. If you had booked them together you would both be on the same PNR.
If the airline allowed what you tried to do then there would be a flood of people trying to connect with 1K passengers and pretending they are together in order to avoid the baggage cost (just like the UC entrance situtation; you'll see a whole thread about that).
You weren't on the PNR so no reason to believe that you were travelling together. Maybe your fiancee is quite nice looking and they thought you were making play for her by sponsoring her baggage.
Bottom line, you made a mistake and now you know better in the future. The rep was right in that she knows that your fiancee doesn't get free bags when she's not on your PNR. You may have been right that she got free bags before, but she would have been on the same PNR.
As an aside, telling a customer service rep "I do this all the time, you don't know what you're talking about" doesn't improve your chances of getting them to help you. Particularly when you were the one who was mistaken.