Rant - CO people need to get off their high horses...Paging UA Insider
 

Mods - this is not a rant about up fare but rather about CO people lecturing their customers.


I am flying DEN - IAH - XXX Sunday. XXX is an international destination w one fight per day. I have 1:26 hours layover in IAH.

Knowing there is a snow event forecast for DEN Sunday, I thought I would try to protect myself on an earlier flight to allow for de-icing time. If I miss my connecting flight, it is a trip in vain.

I call and ask an agent in Tampa. She says they will have to charge a change fee and difference in fare. I say in that case, I will call tomorrow when I am within 24 hours. That should be the end of the call.

Instead she started lecturing me about how my fare was a discounted up fare and how those require change fee even within 24 hours (I know that to be false as long as P class is open). So I told her that I purchased this ticket on the website looking for a business class ticket and the website offered me this ticket. She started saying that the website warns you when one tries to purchase these discounted up fare. I told her there is no warning on the website and I will be happy to see if she can walk me through a booking where it shows that. I told her to fix their IT systems with exactly what she was suggesting rather than lecturing me. She than says our IT people know what they are doing and insisted that it was on the website.

Where do these people get off talking such nonsense?

Trip in VAIN

Those 3 words are like magic. I had one a couple weeks back due to wx and as soon as I said them the agent responded with "oh my", and then she changed my ticket.

-up fares are discussed ad nauseum here, but seriously, being lectured because the website returned what you searched for... seems about par for the course

How do you know that this person worked for pmCO?

She was Tampa based and worked from home. Tampa used to be a call center for CO before they let Tampa call center staff work from home.

not to defend the agent (cause I wouldnt, she was indeed talking nonsense) but as you mention above, this should have been the end of the call. in fact, you shouldn't have/didn't need to say anything about the 24 hour rule. just hang up when you are not getting what you want.

talking to UA has become like talking to a lawyer or the cops. answer only when specifically questioned, as little as possible. hopefully this agent didn't annotate your PNR about your conversation.

I thought this was going to be a thread about how FA's still welcome and encourage enrollment in One Pass.

An uninformed agent in Tampa..........stop the presses :D

K but how do you know she wasn't hired in the last three years?

I'm not fan of the TPA home-based agents either. Many are very arrogant. I've been lectured by them myself.

This is my general rule in any interaction with a large company, why would you volunteer unnecessary information?

I think you're right that many agents would have allowed the free change given the circumstances but once this agent said "no" why not just say thanks and call back? I think, by proclaiming you'd just call back in 24hrs, you somewhat started the lecturing and the agent just one-up'd you.

Like the guy the other day who tried to get into the GFL one day after his GS status expired. You attempted to bend the rules and got caught/denied. I'm not sure why you'd be upset. I understand about the agent's behavior but, IMHO, it was unnecessary to push the issue.

Yup. Me too. And of course they were incredibly incorrect about what they were trying to "lecture" me about.

It is also why I am not a fan of Work-From-Home setups. It is fairly obvious United has little-to-no control and oversight over their call center staff...and it seems worse when dealing with a WFH agent.

They really should spend some time monitoring calls and correcting behavior.

I actually had a very good experience with a Tampa-based agent in December when the dreaded "Saturday Morning Massacree in 4-Part Harmony" aka the weekly schedule update decimated a complicated itinerary for myself, my wife and my sister. She was not only friendly but quite accomodating in my recommended new flights.

At any rate, sCO versu sUA is so over. IMHO, any rant should focus on customer-centric training (or the lack of it)....

What I would like to know is how did you know it was a Tampa based work from home agent? Are you leaving out part of the conversation? I never know where the people are when I call, unless they have a non American accent.

And I agree with one of the statements above, why exacerbate the situation when you already knew you weren't going to get what you wanted from that agent. Just say thank you, hang up and call again. You brought the lecture on yourself. Yes, the agent should not have gone into lecture mode, but if you had ended the call when you said it should have ben the end of the call you invited the extra 2 cents from the agent. Then you come here and rant about it.

If you had ended the call your post probably would have just been about them wanting to charge the change fee and fare difference and you would not have gotten much sympathy from people here as you were outside the SDC window and there was no weather waiver in effect.

If you spend enough time calling United, you get pretty good at it.

For example, just the way they answer the call, tells you a lot. If they say 'thank you for calling the 1K line, how can I help you Mr. Hobo13', you can be pretty darn sure you are talking to PMUA. If they say just say 'Premier Line'... it's an Ex-con.

I could go into more detail, but over the past 2 years it has become verboten to discuss the finer points of PMUA vs. PMCO CSR's on this board.

Oh, and then there is such a thing as saying 'Which call center am I speaking to tonight?" @:-)