Originally Posted by
PTahCha
I am not sure which UC agent was unwilling to assist, since that is a specific benefit of the club membership. At hub airports, the person who can help you is in the club, not the person who checks you in.
UA can certainly rebook you on another carrier. However, the barriers are 1) the front line tool does not make it easy for agents to see availability unless you have specific flights to feed them; 2) this often requires a supervisor to complete the request.
As discussed upthread, they could be assisting customers as virtual agents.
Originally Posted by
lincolnjkc
So far this year:
C70 club at EWR -- three agents out front, 0 agents inside. All three agents said for rebooking my choice was to waste time with AOD or go to the customer service center. "we can't do anything" -- given this club has the "self-admitting gates" that stuck me as an odd staffing/policy decision as, indeed, it's what I ascribe most of my UC membership value to.
About a week later, C130 club at EWR - three agents out front, 0 agents inside. The one agent who acknowledged my presence when I popped out from inside the cliub claimed they had 'no way to know' and 'crew scheduling wouldn't tell is if we asked' the answer to my "where's the crew we're waiting for coming from" question. Amusingly when I asked a different agent at a different airport when they took that capability away and they showed me three different ways the agent could have pulled that up (in SHARES, in AERO, and in Gate Explorer) -- and the total demonstration took less than 3 minutes.
Oh also the EWR A club has no space for agent assistance in the club (the one agent inside is very explicitly an Air Canada only agent), but so far other than having a BP printed (because the kiosks and I weren't getting along) I haven't needed assistance in A (knock on wood since it looks like that's where I'll be tomorrow afternoon)
On my last pass threw Newark the customer service center UC agent #1 had me use was barricaded off which is a disturbingly increasing trend across the system -- not sur why UA is so hell bent on giving such a visible middle finger to passengers. (Fortunately this was the arrival end of a single segment with nothing remarkable so I didn't need service but just because I got lucky...)
Similar experience in Denver for me, Weather was causing delays out of DEN, coupled with an MX issue meant I'd miss my ORD connection to my TATL leg.At least four out in front of the Club explaining to people how to use the automated gates or scanning their passes for them (self-defeating for an automated process?). I asked one of the yellow scarves there if she could re-book me and she asked if my flight had been cancelled, I said no but explained the situation. She said she couldn't but as she was "working down here" but I was welcome to try my luck inside but it was very, very full . She suggested that I'd be better off calling the MP line. Pathetic CS IMO.