Travel goes sideways due to poor check-in errors - worth a letter?
 

Attempting to cut a long story short, scheduled to travel with my wife and infant in arms last Thursday SFO-LAX-IAH-MKE all on purchased Y with mileage to get the upgrades. FWIW the extra stop was for the 787 experience.

For the little ones boarding pass, the check in agent simply reprinted my boarding pass and handwrote "Infant" on it. After wading through the 45 minute security line, his BP was rejected by TSA and we were sent back to check in.

The agent was woefully slow getting us re-booked on the next LAX flight, handed us a whack of boarding passes again, and we were back at the now shorted 15 minute security line. This time she left out my wife's BP for the SFO-LAX portion. Rejected again. United chaperone took all of our stuff back to check in and told us to wait.

After 25 minutes we simply extricated ourselves back to check in since we had missed the whole thing at this point.

Re-booked on Delta, last row and that trip took on a life of it's own. Not United's fault per se but kinda.

Obviously getting my miles back but is this even worth a letter?

Hell yes that is worth a letter. Check-in staff should know how to issue boarding passes for infants, though I think that is just printed on one of your boarding passes.

OP if you used your DL miles for the trip, then I can see where youd expect UA to refund the UA miles used at least only for the SFO-MKE legs.

If however UA FIMed you over to DL (UA will pay DL to have carried you) then I see no reason UA should refund your miles. They may throw you a small token but I wouldnt expect a full refund for the 1 way SFO-MKE. Now had you been on a Paid tkt they would owe you the miles for the way it was tkted

Unacceptable
 

Wow.. There is no excuse for this. My daughter flew almost 50,000 miles in her first 2 years of life as a lap child, and were ALWAYS issued a separate boarding pass for her, with her name on it.
They say INF in large caps across the top and are paired with an adult ticket (both show the same seat), but always a separate boarding pass with her name.
Total incompetence for an agent not to know how to do this.

-Chris

Yes, it is worth a letter. The agents have policies and procedures they are supposed to follow. Writing "Infant" on a printed boarding pass certainly isn't one of them.

It was a paid economy united booking on ua.com, and upgraded using miles. UA put us over on delta to make good on the trip. However, from F back to Y of course. Can you clarify that we shouldn't get the miles back for the upgrades? Note I wasn't even considering asking for financial refund as they got us there in economy without the upgrades as promised.

I suppose I should've known I just haven't traveled with him very much and it wasn't on the checklist. Both the DL and SW legs carried a large INF.

I wouldn't waste my time with a letter. Move on with life; don't get frustrated with the little things.

That said, one should never leave the agent without examining that each boarding pass is present and accurate.

You certainly should get the miles back for the upgrades you didn't get. I hope I'm not being naive in assuming that, even these days, UA will readily redeposit the miles into your account.

Agreed, that OP shouldn't get too hung up over this. But he's entitled to getting his upgrade miles back and he'd potentially be doing UA and other future passengers a favor by calling to UA's attention the exceptionally sloppy UA agent work.

Yes, one should make sure one's boarding pass is accurate, which would have helped with the wife's missing boarding pass. As for scrawling INF on a boarding pass, the OP could assume that the agent knew what he/she was doing.

I'm hoping that this was done tongue-in-cheek...

Because, obviously - it's well worth writing a letter and making someone understands how awful the situation was to ensure that it doesn't happen again at that station, by that agent or whatever.

For a new parent, I couldn't imagine that happening - you have enough to worry about and struggle with, and UA's uninformed TAs should not be part of that equation.

Cross my fingers, we've had *decent* experience thus far flying UA with a lap infant - from great FAs to surly check-in agents and GAs who think we are inconveniencing other people...add in the auto-split on check-in and you are left with two parents trying to check-in simultaneously with multiple checked baggage and a single infant on one of the tickets - SHARES shows it's issues as usual, given that I have to add an infant at the kiosk, even though it was already on my itin and listed explicitly on the res!

-jeremy

I posted what I did since you posted " all on purchased Y with mileage to get the Bump". I took that to mean it was a mileage tkt and you had so many stops hoping to VDB off 1 or more of them.

From what I quoted of your last post it seems you said "BUMP" in your 1st post and should have said "UPGRADE"

Now that you explained it clearly yes UA should redeposit the miles you used to Upgrade the tkts. You should also ask for the mileage you would have earned had you flown on UA metal, and hopefully you credit the DL flights to your DL acct for a Double Dip.

Now depending when you arrived seems it would ahve been before your last UA flight would have I dont think UA will throw you a bone for the hassle you went thru besides the miles back and credit as if you flew UA and not DL. Let us know if they throw you a bone besides the other items tia

Ah thanks. That explains it. We arrived a lot later than originally planned but I'm not too bent about that since at that point it was all DL issues, not UA.

I didn't think about getting the original mileage credit. Thanks.

United stikes again!
 

Not exactly the same issue but close.

I really couldn't bring myself to actually write a letter last time. This time I have to.

Can someone direct me to the best place to direct my letter (address, etc?)? Can't seem to find in any UA Wiki.

Thanks.

What happened this time? (just curious)

start with the e-mail on the back of your 1K card.

Hey there it is! Thanks WC