Is it appropriate for United to call after midnight?
 

The other night I received a call at 12:20am from a reservations supervisor regarding a ticketing problem on a reservation that had been booked earlier that evening. This woke me up and kept me up until well after 1am dealing with it. I get up for work at 6, so the next day was unpleasant.

While the issue did need to be dealt with promptly because the reservation included some flights on another airline (LH), it was not so urgent that it couldn't have waiting until morning. Indeed, despite being told at the conclusion of the call that everything was resolved, in the morning I found that the reservation still wasn't ticketed and had to spend another 45 minutes on the phone while at work. :rolleyes:

I complained about the lateness of the call to 1KVoice and was surprised that they seemed unconcerned about it. So...am I crazy for thinking that the timing of the call was inappropriate? I'm curious about what everyone else thinks.

(And let's not discuss the problems brought on by SHARES' separation of the reservation and ticketing functions...)

While I could understand if you were traveling and away from you home location, that a call could occur at odd hours. But at your home location, I would agree it was inappropriate unless it so most urgent.

turn your phone off at night?

tougher to do with landlines and a bad idea if you might have other reasons for late night calls. I think it is better for UA to use some judgement / common sense.

Sure, common sense is good, but -- I say kudos to UA for calling you. We so often see people complaining about problems with their reservations that UA never caught, about having to monitor reservations closely, about partner flights not being confirmed -- and on and on and on.

It is too bad they woke you up, but perhaps the supervisor was working then and going out on vacation etc. Better to catch it and deal with it than deal with repercussions later.

"Can we do this call call tomorrow please, it's too late now"

I think I would initially be annoyed but once I got over it grateful they were proactive about trying to resolve the problem.

Unless it involved a flight the next day, there is no excuse for a call at that hour of the night. That's just stupid.

Agreed ^ but perhaps setting a quiet/do not call time for the contact phone number in ones profile? Not saying it will work ;) but just a thought

I would be upset if it was like a 5 minute schedule change. I won't mind them calling if it was my booked SQ flight in F got vaporized.

Kudos to UA for being proactive.

As far as the CSR knew, it could have been a cell phone, instead of a landline, and therefore could have been located in a timezone that was not too late for the call. Just saying.

I really think this is a no-win situation. If UA had not called then several FTers in that situation would be complaining about that.

In which time zone was the CS sup located?

+1

With all the telephone technology that exists, UA couldn't possibly know (with any degree of certainty) in which time zone the OP was located.

Weill... they have his flight records, so they'll be able to tell if he's out of town on a flight booked through UA. And area codes can be looked up to tell what state the phone originally was (reported to be) in when the phone company issued the number.

It's safest to assume that a phone is at it's correct time zone. People can't get nearly as annoyed if they receive a call at odd/unfriendly hours when they're travelling.

Additionally, there's always email.