MatthewLAX

Wow!

FLYDCA

I guess I brought up an old topic I was unaware of. In all my million plus BIS miles flying UA I don't ever recall it being this hard to spend more money with them. Had I been able to handle this online or by phone I would have. I have decided to Fly AA instead for this I was trying to buy from UA. It will cost me more but I'm not willing to put up with more poor customer service from a vendor.

jackal

Next time, ask them if you can pay for a held itinerary there. Or alternatively, ask if they can look up an itinerary. When they pull it up, then ask, "Can I pay for this?" It's all in how you ask--if you successfully communicate to the agent that he/she isn't going to have to build a ticket from scratch, they are much more likely to be willing to make an exception to the policy (and it is an official policy--your post was merged into the existing thread discussing this).

It could be worse--you could be in the Alaska Airlines Board Room, where the concierges are management employees and not unionized ticket agents and so are prohibited from assisting you with any ticketing transactions at all...you have to go outside of the club to the [never staffed] customer service counter or all the way outside of security for any IRROPS assistance.

Not in my experience. Every club with one desk has been able to assist me with anything I've needed. In the very small clubs with one desk and one agent working the desk, I always feel slightly guilty when I have a complicated issue and I end up holding up a line of people forming behind me trying to check into the club, but the agents have always been willing and able to assist.

FLYDCA

I hear you and I have years of experience on this front. This club agent however was not going to help me no matter how I asked. That sadly for me is the new state of affairs. Asking nicely no longer helps for much of anything. I'm just an inconvenient transaction to UA and our former relationship built over the years has been dead for about a year now.

Andy Big Bear

This is really quite depressing, though the club agents have never really let me down, which is why I continue to pay that MileagePlus Club Card fee, if I had gotten that kind of reception anytime, I would have saved myself the money. I hope this isn't an increasing trend for UA, because every day we read how things are slowly turning upside down on the customer service side.

dmodemd

I had an experience where a SEA UC club agent had me rebooked on
- another airline
- when my flight was delayed
- before I even got to the club!
She was proactively rebooking tight international conmections so it was ready when I showed up. She still works there.

jackal

Actually, I wasn't referring to asking nicely. I was referring to the order in which you present the information to the agent.

The agent needs to know that it's going to be a 30-second transaction, not a 5-minute transaction. By having the agent pull up first pull up the existing reservation, the agent knows that the hard work (pricing everything out--which, while automatic for you and I on the website, seems to require some manual hackery when a phone or airport agent issues a ticket) is already done and all they need to do is swipe your card. And at that point, half the work is done (pulling up the reservation), so the barrier-to-entry of completing the transaction is low.

If you come up to the agent and ask (even as sweetly as a southern belle) if he or she can issue you a ticket, the first thing that goes through the agent's mind is that you want to buy a new ticket and the corresponding hassle and stress and time of getting things to price out for you. In that case, the agent is going to follow the official policy and decline to help you.

So attitude has little (if anything) to do with it--the phrasing you use to ask for assistance (based on knowing how the systems work) is key.

FLYDCA

I do agree with you and I formerly considered myself to have an expert level ability for this. I'm not sure those skills are as valuable any longer.

1KPath

Yup!...I experienced something very similar at SEA last year...she even got me into First on AS (I was in Y on UA)!

The agents at the LAX Terminal 7 club will do ticketing if he line is not too long...just last week they did some complicated award ticketing changes for me while I waited for a flight (they had me take a seat and brought the "changes" and ticketing to my desk!)...granted, I have known almost all of the agents here for years (my Angels), but I see them help others with complicated tasks all of the time!


I have had difficulty at IAD (they tried but failed...is this surprising?)and at EWR and IAH where future ticketing was denied upfront. Fortunately, I don't have to travel to these clubs very often any more! YMMV

Now that UA corporate has removed the tools that line employees can use...and even more important, removed most employee empowerment, I am afraid you are correct!

channa

It's not a 30-second transaction.

Someone described how to issue a new, purchased ticket in SHARES a while back, and it was quite ridiculous.

It involved a command and typing in a credit card and amount which requests a CC authorization. Then retyping that credit card number and authorization into another command to actually issue the ticket, all with the right syntax and such.

Often1

The analogies just don't work. The UC at DCA is relatively small and often staffed by only one agent. If I'm the guy standing behind the guy who wants to be ticketed, either the agent has to continually turn away from her ticketing task to deal with me (and others) or we all stand there. Or UA goes out and hires a second or third person to sit there in case someone shows up who can't pick up the phone and dial an 800#.

The UC agent was wrong in one respect. Rather than directing OP to the counter for service, she could have suggested he use the phone (available in the UC).

Somebody's going to be inconvenienced here. But, there's many ways for OP to get ticketed. There's only one way for me to get in (unless people here want UC's to stop checking for scammers).

PTahCha

I guess you got lucky and have not been through JFK then. They refused to help me even in an IRROP, and this was in PMUA days. Or could be one single agent. who knows.

jackal

You guessed wrong. I've been in the JFK UC 6x in the last six months.

hobo13

No actually, I think the problem is that Jeffy Jeff cannot provide an efficient means for issuing a ticket.

Row3Acer

I am in SFO united club and try to ask the agent if he/she could help me use my paper voucher to book future flights. They all told me that they no longer make future reservations for customers, they can only change itineraries for existing reservations. Kind of disappointing...