DaviddesJ

Believe it or not, not everyone is as rational and logical as you when awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. Peer down on mere humanity from Mount Olympus, and you might get a better perspective.

dilbertsdaddy

Some of this discussion is pretty ridiculous.....

Google:

Area code XXX (enter)

What time is it in XXX (enter)


That would deal with the majority of the issues....

If you have a west coast area code and moved 3 years ago to the east coast and kept the number then that was done for your reasons....that is a one off...

Might I point out that midnight is still late in the other time zones...so where ever you are traveling it is still late. Most productive business people would in fact be asleep.

If my 0600 flight the next day was cancelled or something I would want them to call but otherwise....not so much!

JDS747

+1 ^

leonidas

This is why I use my google voice number as my primary/ home/ billing phone number. I have set all calls between 10pm-6am to go to voicemail directly without ringing my cellphone.

danielonn

Wouldn't an e-mail be the best way to contact the customer informing them that there is an issue with their ticket and for them to contact Web Reservations or a special emergency ticketing number?

Another option would be for United to confirm you on their metal with a ticket number and still look for the Lufthansa flight once they get the ok from LH you would automatically be ticketed on LH.

GregMM

Very true. When my wife and I went to France last summer, we took our Vonage box with us so we could call make/receive calls home to talk to our kids (they were staying with someone without a good Skype setup). Our East Coast US home phone number spent a week being 6 hours off from its normal time zone. I would have been fine with a 3AM Eastern call, but not a 10PM Eastern call.

CO_Nonrev_elite

I am homeless. I haven't had any residence other than a hotel for 5 years. I don't own a home, I don't rent an apartment. Hotel's are not so bad, no one should feel sorry for me

SkiAdcock

The OP spent 45 minutes because something was screwed up & then he had to do it again in the morning when it was supposedly fixed but wasn't. He's got a right to complain

Cheers.

CP@YOW

Thanks for all your replies. They were eye-opening, although I think some were unduly harsh, particularly given that I wasn't just venting, but sincerely asking if my interpretation was reasonable.

The concept (or at least the practicality) of having a primary phone number in an area code other than that of one's primary residence was new to me, probably because this would be difficult and expensive here in Canada where our telecommunications providers are much less customer-friendly than in the US.

I simplified the story to keep it short. A few more details based on your questions:

The call was to my landline. (My cell was on vibrate.) The first time it rang, I did not answer. A few minutes later it rang again, and I still did not answer, but then decided to get up to see who had called, in case it was an emergency. There was a voice mail asking if it was correct that the reservation departed YOW but returned to EWR. (It was not supposed to!) I was also anxious to get it ticketed because I wanted to apply a GPU and one of the flights was at R1. Yes, I could have ignored it and gone back to sleep, but I called back, not expecting it to take as long as it did (but perhaps that was naive!). For the record, if United had not called me until the next day, I would *not* have been mad that they did not contact me immediately, as some suggested. United screwed up the reservation, so as far as I'm concerned it would be their responsibility to make it right, regardless of timing.

The call was within a couple hours of booking, so I can actually forgive the agent for making the judgment that she did, because her intent was good. I e-mailed 1KVoice for 2 reasons: (1) to determine whether United has a policy on when it is appropriate to call customers and (2) to indicate the inconvenience this caused me, hoping that it could be passed on as a training issue, because I did not get to speak to the agent who called me.

My concern with the response from customer service was that they basically tried to justify the timing of the call. They did say that they "regret" that the call was after midnight, but did not apologize. That's why I posted here, to see if my interpretation was unreasonable. Given that the reservation issue was caused entirely by United's systems and/or human error, I would have at least appreciated an apology for the amount of my time that it wasted, not to mention the loss of sleep.

(The reservation screw-up was definitely United's fault as I have a printout of the confirmation showing it correctly as of the time of booking, pricing and credit card authorization. For some reason, they subsequently deleted the last segment and changed the date of travel on other flights to eliminate a valid 22h connection).

callum9999

I don't think you have much cause to complain if you were the one to actually call them back (not that I'm saying you were!), but I find a lot of the other responses ridiculously absurd. The comment from someone saying that it may have been a cell phone so it might not have been too late if it was in a different time zone being the most absurd. I take it they'd be happy with any company that needs to contact them calling them up at 3am on the off chance they happened to be in Madrid that day!?

Maybe some of you frequent fliers spend most of your time in different corners of the globe, but it's just common sense to assume that if you don't know otherwise, someone is going to be in their home time zone at the very least.

duniawala

Now if you had just said this in the first place, I am sure you would have had a much better/different response.

CMK10

I had Amtrak do this to me once under similar circumstances and I was really annoyed. If it's something that cannot wait, absolutely call me and wake me up. But in this case, let's handle it during regular business hours. Sleep is a very precious commodity.

twtrvl

+1 to all the above.




Too late, as the OP had already been wakened by the 2 calls from UA. Not everyone can simply return to sleep on demand. Even worse if it was REM sleep which UA disrupted.

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