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So how does UA win back the flying public? (Beyond the obvious)

So how does UA win back the flying public? (Beyond the obvious)

Old Apr 14, 2017, 5:49 pm
  #301  
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Originally Posted by Steffo
For these reasons, buying a seat on UA would, in my opinion, be a human rights violation.
Whose human rights would I violate by buying a seat on UA?
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Old Apr 14, 2017, 6:30 pm
  #302  
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Originally Posted by Steffo
For these reasons, buying a seat on UA would, in my opinion, be a human rights violation.
You're kidding, right? Which "human right" has been violated?
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Old Apr 14, 2017, 9:22 pm
  #303  
 
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Originally Posted by hejiranyc
UA, has to learn a thing or two from the airlines with the loyalist adherents. Southwest, for example. Their focus has to be on the customer and not the blind ambition to generate revenue via nickel-and-dime fees and exploiting every opportunity to gouge the customer.
Perhaps simplistic, but they do need to be more customer facing, and see their business more in customer service than simply transportation.

I had an issue today on a paid F fare, and when I called in to possibly get re-routed due to a schedule change, they could have easily made the change, but instead wanted to charge me a fare difference of +$1,000, but would "waive" the change fee as a courtesy since I was a 1K and the change was their fault.

I totally get the need for rules and guidelines, but there also has to be flexibility and empowering agents to HELP people. My issue was small compared to the bigger ones this thread is in response to, but when they could make a change and have a happy customer without it impacting their bottom line (the flight I asked to be switched to currently has my fare code available @8, and is even showing R8), yet they refuse, it seems misguided.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 3:35 am
  #304  
 
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To me the issue lately is one of a resounding lack of customer service, fix that and customers may return etc.

Here is my exchange in the UA Club at IAH on Monday at 8.15p when I decided to return to the club as a result of a delay on my TK flight:

Me: Present my bp.
UA: "Sir they just called and told me that this flight is boarding."
Me: "I was just at the gate and they announced the flight is now boarding at 9pm and this is also what the monitors say. Would you mind calling to check please?"
UA: "No."
Me: "Really?"
UA: "Yes, I can't call, look that's what they told me, if you miss your flight that's not my fault."
Me: "Ok, thanks for your help."

The agent could not have been more surly, look more aggrieved by my request and quite frankly had a poor attitude, tone and total lack of customer service!
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 3:46 am
  #305  
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Originally Posted by rajsbasi
To me the issue lately is one of a resounding lack of customer service, fix that and customers may return etc.

Here is my exchange in the UA Club at IAH on Monday at 8.15p when I decided to return to the club as a result of a delay on my TK flight:

Me: Present my bp.
UA: "Sir they just called and told me that this flight is boarding."
Me: "I was just at the gate and they announced the flight is now boarding at 9pm and this is also what the monitors say. Would you mind calling to check please?"
UA: "No."
Me: "Really?"
UA: "Yes, I can't call, look that's what they told me, if you miss your flight that's not my fault."
Me: "Ok, thanks for your help."

The agent could not have been more surly, look more aggrieved by my request and quite frankly had a poor attitude, tone and total lack of customer service!
Real clowns and a half. You wonder why people are leaving these airlines and switching to the middle eastern and asian airliners in droves.

But it's a pity if you have to deal with them/fly with them due to company rules in the States.

The sad part is, the agent will do it to someone else tommorrow and he`/she will just carry on with that screwed up attitude.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 10:07 am
  #306  
 
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Originally Posted by rajsbasi
To me the issue lately is one of a resounding lack of customer service, fix that and customers may return etc.

Here is my exchange in the UA Club at IAH on Monday at 8.15p when I decided to return to the club as a result of a delay on my TK flight:

Me: Present my bp.
UA: "Sir they just called and told me that this flight is boarding."
Me: "I was just at the gate and they announced the flight is now boarding at 9pm and this is also what the monitors say. Would you mind calling to check please?"
UA: "No."
Me: "Really?"
UA: "Yes, I can't call, look that's what they told me, if you miss your flight that's not my fault."
Me: "Ok, thanks for your help."

The agent could not have been more surly, look more aggrieved by my request and quite frankly had a poor attitude, tone and total lack of customer service!
IAH Club agents are rude and condescending- I encounter some version of this 5 times a year.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 10:46 am
  #307  
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Originally Posted by hejiranyc
Finally, UA, has to learn a thing or two from the airlines with the loyalist adherents. Southwest, for example.
Show me an airline and I will show you someone who is boycotting them. For example, for Southwest, let me introduce you to fellow FTer Steffo:

Originally Posted by Steffo
I just looked it up and it has been 7 years now since SW abused Kevin Smith for being fat and I began my boycott of SW. I book travel for a number of people and I don't even check SW fares anymore.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 11:29 am
  #308  
 
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Originally Posted by sfoeuroflyer
Let me confess bias: I travel a lot. One constant in my choices: I avoid UA at all costs. I can't think of a pleasant interaction with this miserable excuse of an airline. They still have not recovered from the years when they ceded control to the unions and built in the belief that the airline existed for the employees and neither the customers nor the shareholders.

This incident proves that theory again. There were numerous solutions that were available short of dragging this guy off the plane: 1. increase the compensation offers. Plainly there would have been prices above those offered that would have done the trick; 2. Get the crew to who wanted the seats other transport..maybe a connecting flight, maybe on another airline, maybe a charter.

No amount of fancy ads and public puffery will fool the public. We know what these people are made of.
Same. I'm 1K because I do a lot of business travel. Mostly DEN-OGG, and DEN-Houston, so I am trapped a bit with Denver as a hub. But United is so bad through and through: from the "dedicated 1K line" (that isn't), the IRROPS, the surly everybody, the change fees, the TOD upgrades, the lazy attendants that do not prioritize food orders, the coach FA's that argue about charging me for food AND drink, etc., etc. It is everything that is lousy, and as a 1K I have a way better experience than the typical flyer.

Lately, I have been taking WN to Houston Hobby, and to get to Maui I go Hawaiian from the west coast to HNL, and then take Mokulele to the west side of Maui. I look around to avoid UAL when I can. All this is slightly less convenient than a nonstop UAL flight to OGG, but they (United in all phases) are just so awful. These cell phone videos are United in a nutshell.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 4:22 pm
  #309  
 
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Originally Posted by wolf72
Real clowns and a half. You wonder why people are leaving these airlines and switching to the middle eastern and asian airliners in droves.

But it's a pity if you have to deal with them/fly with them due to company rules in the States.

The sad part is, the agent will do it to someone else tommorrow and he`/she will just carry on with that screwed up attitude.
While I would normally agree with you. I would say the issue has nothing to do with company rules but to do with customer service. In this case just like 99% of the issues that we seem to encounter on Untied has to do with Customer Service. This is the problem with that company. They act as if you should pay your money to them and you should be proud to pay it and get the garbage treatment that they give.

Even if the agent cant do a thing for you, if they were to say I am so sorry, I really understand your situation and with a smile on their face would say if I could do something for you I truly would how much further would that go? How much does it cost them to be professional and courteous. Not a dime, this has lingered since Continental took over and the reason I don't fly them anymore.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 8:37 pm
  #310  
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Originally Posted by shortkidd
While I would normally agree with you. I would say the issue has nothing to do with company rules but to do with customer service. In this case just like 99% of the issues that we seem to encounter on Untied has to do with Customer Service. This is the problem with that company. They act as if you should pay your money to them and you should be proud to pay it and get the garbage treatment that they give.

Even if the agent cant do a thing for you, if they were to say I am so sorry, I really understand your situation and with a smile on their face would say if I could do something for you I truly would how much further would that go? How much does it cost them to be professional and courteous. Not a dime, this has lingered since Continental took over and the reason I don't fly them anymore.
Well written.

You know what I would do? I would go one step further.

I would actually name and identify the ground staff in question who was rude or unhelpful. It is drastic. It is extreme.

But it might just give them (the airline and staff in question) a kick up the backside they desperately need to sort themselves out and to improve their CS skill set.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 8:47 pm
  #311  
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Cancel all of their Airbus orders and buy Boeing,
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 9:30 pm
  #312  
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Originally Posted by richardwft
Cancel all of their Airbus orders and buy Boeing,
I'll take the Airbus 18" wide seats any day over the 17" wide seats on Boeings.
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Old Apr 15, 2017, 10:58 pm
  #313  
 
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Originally Posted by wolf72
Real clowns and a half. You wonder why people are leaving these airlines and switching to the middle eastern and asian airliners in droves.

But it's a pity if you have to deal with them/fly with them due to company rules in the States.

The sad part is, the agent will do it to someone else tommorrow and he`/she will just carry on with that screwed up attitude.
---------------------
I agree with you and please, don't (anyone) read this as snark but ........

Oh but these are the very ("senior") employees that everyone claims are sooooo worth having a club membership for during irregular ops and how great and knowledgeable they are. No, these are angry employees who just want to take out their anger and frustration on others as they power trip all of their working days with United - it can't get any easier for them; they only have to keep using the NO mentality. Multiply that x tens of thousands of employees (for years/ decades) and short of a supervisor standing over their shoulder, they will not suffer any ramifications (and I'm not so sure the supervisor would make a difference!).

I have no status with United, all I am is a lowly United Mileage Plus Explorer cc holder. As you know they annually send us two free entry cards of which I presented for two of us recently at a pre-merger Continental heavy station - United Club. As they sat inches from the agent on the counter in the club while she's looking right at the cards, she proceeds to ask if we are dues paying members of the club. "No, but we have these...".......she immediately cut us off and said unless we were dues paying members we could not enter the club. Finally as I slid the cards even closer to her blindness and deafness, she finally stopped saying "no" long enough to look at the validity and eligibility and logged us in. ("Oh")... No smile, no apology, no thanks (just "oh").....awful, just awful. I honestly don't know how Oscar is going to get some of these stubborn, ill-mannered, sloppy, uncaring workers to use something called LISTENING and COMMON SENSE (that generally is something that you learn from your parents or basic manners in elementary school) !!!!!

Originally Posted by shortkidd
While I would normally agree with you. I would say the issue has nothing to do with company rules but to do with customer service. In this case just like 99% of the issues that we seem to encounter on Untied has to do with Customer Service. This is the problem with that company. They act as if you should pay your money to them and you should be proud to pay it and get the garbage treatment that they give.

Even if the agent cant do a thing for you, if they were to say I am so sorry, I really understand your situation and with a smile on their face would say if I could do something for you I truly would how much further would that go? How much does it cost them to be professional and courteous. Not a dime, this has lingered since Continental took over and the reason I don't fly them anymore.
------
So right you are......I was pre-merger UA and I always empathized with passengers (worded as you said above) when my hands were tied and I couldn't change anything or do very little for them. I got very little resistance by being nice (not phony). It was so much easier on them and me to just be courteous and empathetic. Actually many times I did take it further and make an extra phone call or two if I knew there was even a slight chance to help. On occasion I was actually able to move mountains (depending on the contacts I got through to).

I hate listening to employees who are cold and act like judge and jury. I really got into it one day (behind closed doors) with a coworker who riled up a guy so bad, she was flat out "torturing" him with rules. It was so bad that he missed his flight - I really think he would have punched her if he could. For other reasons I won't get into, I couldn't bail the guy out but when he left I told her she was horrible and simply tortured the guy. Then I told her how she could have avoided the whole problem and he wouldn't have missed his flight. She didn't talk to me for months. Oh well, it did actually get to the ears of a supervisor (by the passenger) and the supervisor did give her a talking to.

Last edited by WineCountryUA; Apr 15, 2017 at 11:32 pm Reason: merging consecutive posts by same member -- please use multi-quote
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 12:03 am
  #314  
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Originally Posted by notquiteaff
Show me an airline and I will show you someone who is boycotting them. For example, for Southwest, let me introduce you to fellow FTer Steffo:
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Old Apr 16, 2017, 3:33 am
  #315  
 
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@FlyingNone:
Your story reminds me of the one time I've used a United Club (at ORD, in fact): I was on a layover MSP-ORD-MCO and popped in for breakfast. I used my AGR Select Executive card for entry (AGR has carry-over privileges dating from an Amtrak-Continental alliance back in the 90s and early 2000s; I have no MileagePlus account...I credit any miles on United to SQ since they're a favored transfer partner from Chase, Starwood, and Hyatt (oh my!)) and I swear the lady at the front desk thought I must be from Mars. She did swipe the card and seemed rather boggled that I was being let in.

Now, I'll grant that these cards probably show up at IAD and EWR a lot more than at ORD...but it really felt odd to get that reaction.

That aside, with the Segway story...I predicted a few days ago that these stories would keep rolling out for a bit. It's gonna be "air every time United messed with you in some way" night at the opera for a while, especially since doing so is also a quick-and-easy headline for the local news. It's not the incident that's hitting United...it's the (bad) recovery and the (bad) narrative of a pattern of bad behavior.
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