hobo13

No need to ask.

"Premier Services" vs. "1K"

But it often doesn't matter. I've had PMCO agents tell me how GRRREAT SHARES is during the midst of a 40 minute simple schedule change fix.

ThereYaGo

Twice this month I missed a connection, and when they re-booked me on another flight they forgot to delete the original itinerary, which meant that the subsequently deleted my return flight since I "was a no-show" on the original outbound. Make sure to ask the re-booking agent if they deleted the original outbound!

alex_b

I've had a number of these types of conversations in the last 12 months; 25 mins to apply RPUs, long waits to split flights, generally if I need to call United I set aside an hour of my day. This was just one example that seemed particularly egregious.

It was definitely the computer, she said she'd checked what she was typing three times and that it kept giving her an error, then others were helping her and having the same issue. She seemed pretty confident and together with the initial change, so I don't think this was simple user error. Plus it doesn't matter, no IT system should be so crippled that it can ever take 30 mins to resync a ticket during irops.

Channa - I think this is probably right. I was changing KOA-SFO-IAH-LGA on an L fare to KOA-ORD-LGA and H was the lowest bucket available (5 hour delay on the KOA-SFO leg which would have meant I'd still be somewhere on the west coast rather than home right now.

It all got fixed in the end, but if I'd been overseas without freephone access to United, I'd be pretty pissed at the cost of that phone bill.

channa

This is my rule of thumb as well. If I don't have an hour to kill, I don't call United.


Oh yeah, one of the agents posted here a while back that there is no 3:2 sync (3 segment to 2 segments). Just 2:1, 1:2, 1:1, 2:2, etc. So if you want to do a 3:2, you have to iteratively do it (e.g., pick 2 segments, do a 2:1 sync, then take the resultant 2 segments and do a 2:2). Each step is of course prone to error since you have to type it exactly right.

It really is an antquated system not designed for the route network United has at the moment.

alex_b

That's a) crazy b) seems to suggest that some 3:2 reroutings are not possible. Surely there are many A-B-C-D routes where A-C or B-D don't exist so unless you change origin or destination, you couldn't fix a ticket. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the process though.

channa

Remember that CO was a smaller airline with less reach. So that when it did 3:2 swaps, those were fewer and further between.

So when they took CO's systems and used them for UA's route network (plus CO's route network), there were some gaps in functionality. And that's without getting into the ease of use issues (which is a big problem).

Think about it...how many UA flyers are flying KOA-SFO-XXX-XXX. In the CO network, there was no KOA, so not a problem. Lots of AUS-IAH or AUS-IAH-XXX flyers though, so the 3-segment scenario wasn't all that common.

Nobody says you can't do what you want though.

Say you want to change KOA-SFO-IAH-LGA to KOA-ORD-LGA. The system may have to do it iteratively:

1. KOA-SFO-IAH-LGA --> KOA-SFO-ORD-LGA (2:2: swap on SFO-IAH-LGA to SFO-ORD-LGA). Now your ticket it KOA-SFO-ORD-LGA.

2. KOA-SFO-ORD-LGA --> KOA-ORD-LGA. 2:1 swap on KOA-SFO-ORD to KOA-ORD.

It still can be done, it's just a much more primitive way of doing it.

star_world

I have seen several posts here by UA employees (including some directly responding to posts of yours like the one above) that comprehensively describe the process required to do all of these combinations of ticket swaps, moving from less to more segments and vice versa. It was a significantly shorter process, and takes less time to do, than your paragraphs above. You are describing a hypothetical whereas people who actually know what they are doing and use the system on a daily basis have told you it is nowhere near as complex as you would have us believe.

Why do you perpetuate this? The very fact that your post looks like you know what you're talking about could have newcomers believing that this was the truth.

If it takes an agent longer than a few minutes to make any change like this, it's because (a) they weren't trained well enough, or (b) they just can't be bothered.

channa

Thank you very much for your perspective. If this is true, perhaps I should make a more concerted effort to write in a complaint about any employee who takes more than 5-10 minutes to do a rebook.

Unfortunately, based on my experience, this means I would be writing in a complaint on practically every employee I run into who rebooks me, as a sub-10 minute rebook is quite the anomaly these days, IME.

star_world

I must be really lucky then - I seem to have these anomalies more often than not

MSPGabe

Channa is correct, that's how you'd resync a ticket when it's more than a 2 to 2 switch. The 4 resync commands are 1 to 1, 1 to 2, 2 to 1, and 2 to 2. Gotta double up when you've got 3 segments.

The problem becomes even greater when you don't have common connection cities. KOA-SFO-ORD-MKE can easily be switched to KOA-SFO-DEN-MKE because SFO's common to both records. But if you go PWM-ORD-DEN-COS and need to switch it to PWM-IAD-SFO-COS. Can't be done with a normal resync. Gotta call the help desk.

(Full disclosure: I haven't worked with UA since November and things may have gotten better.)