Thanks JAXPax for your reply. What you wrote made perfect sense on a variety of levels. Based on what you and some others have said I will not file with DOT. My complaint is based on how my situation was treated and the inconsistency with what I was told by the app, gate agent and CS in the lounge on the day of travel. Incidentally all of them were professional, helpful and kind.

In brief, I purchased an award ticket to Milan and onward connections in Europe. The MXP flight had multiple delays and finally the flight was "cancelled" and a the gate agent said a new plane would be coming at 11:30PM and if we did not receive a message on the app we could not board and would have to go to CS and rebook. The 3 people I were with all received the message. I went to the lounge and was told that there was space on the new flight but they could seem to book me on that flight. Multiple CSRs tried to do this and they stayed past the 10:30PM closing time (on their own nickel) to assist me. Finally they were able to reroute me the next day on flight via Frankfurt. They also did gave me a voucher for a taxi home. the next morning I checked the UA App and I noticed an email message sent the previous evening at 10:30PM on the App that said "My flight to Milan was ready for boarding".

I wrote to customer care and the response received was the flight was cancelled and all they could offer was $200 travel certificate. I view it as I was bumped from the replacement flight and it was not a cancelation. I wrote back to customer care and asked them to escalate my complaint. I received a prompt reply from another Customercare Rep (it didn't seem like my complaint was escalated) who stated that I choose to reroute my flight so UA has no responsibility. There was no. flight the next day via Milan I had not choice but to take what the UA CS in the lounge offered.


Incidentally, the morning of the FRA flight I checked the app and it showed that my luggage had been re-routed from Milan to Frankfurt, but not onward to my final destination,. When I called UA CS I was advised to get to airport as early as possible reclaim my luggage and recheck it in on the new Itinerary. I got to the airport at 11AM for 6:30 PM flight and baggage claim would not release my luggage so I spent the next 6 hours at the airport. Of course my luggage got delayed in FRA and I received it 4 days later.

Last summer my flight from AMS to EWR was cancelled. I not only received the EU261 compensation. but received an additional 300 Euros to cover expenses. Now I realise my flight from the USA does not fall under EU261. But I feel I should receive some sort of additional compensation similar to the 300 I received for the AMS-EWR flight or a redeposit of my miles for the outgoing award flight into my milage plus account.

Any thoughts?

PS. I am not sure if this was a coincidence or a result of my complaint but on last weekend I received a text message from UA on my Cellphone, not on the App stating "you'll now receive SMS flight updates from United when traveling......Reply STOP to opt out.......