bob_the_d

I'm curious if anyone knows what happened to this. It still works, emails get through, but I get an automated response from general United Customer Care now and where I used to get same day responses, now it takes a day or two to get a reply. Is this now just being funneled through the regular queue?

lilpisher

Definitely not - I had emailed the generic customer care email address in late January and still haven't gotten a reply.

exerda

It still works, but the quality of the responses has gone way, way down.

I'm seeing ~8-10 day response times, and the responses often don't align with what you reported. I had one regarding a downgrade, and they sent it to refunds, who then said, "But you bought a Y ticket, so you're due no refund." (I wasn't even asking for a refund, either.) Another on missing miles came back with an inscrutable "We are sorry we are unable to assist our valued customer like you at this time" line. (To be fair, I knew 1K Voice and the MP Service Center weren't going to be able to help on that particular item--but I needed proof to take back to the vendor who was insisting it was UA and MP who needed to process.)

Repooc17

For most items, would suggest just hitting up MPSC via chat in the app.

halls120

This. MPSC seems to be the last surviving remnant of pmUA's customer service culture. They actually appear to care. Oh, and the Government Desk.

The Man in Seat 9A

Interesting piece of anecdata: I called in with an issue with an itinerary on LH metal with upgrades, fairly complex. Normal US business hours, nice agent who thanked me for being 1k and seemed to know what she was doing, she totally got the issue and appeared to be working it. She put me on hold a few times and then came back and said "My computer isn't doing it what I need it to do, may I put you on hold for a minute while I reach out to someone else?" I said fine and immediately was switched to the basic hold music (rhapsody in blue, and all agents are busy). In a few minutes a new rep, with a different name answered and thanked me for being a 1k. She knew I had been handed off, but she didn't have any background on the issue. In sorting out what had happened, she asked "Did you ask to be transferred to the 1k line? That's what it says here." In any event, she was able to very quickly solve the problem.

Strange wording that I've never heard before. I thought I called the 1k line in the first place and I didn't think that asking for the 1k line was a thing I could do.

Kmxu

Bold is mine.
A colleague of mine said that one of the government desk agents would move the mountain for you, but the other one was useless. I do not have a similar assessment because I do not call government desk often.
As far as 1K agents are concerned, there are some good ones and there are a few less helpful ones. Most of my calls took much longer than I anticipated. That is, I got a good share of less skillful 1K agents when I had to call 1K line. I agree that MPSC agents are very helpful and quick (the issue is much simpler, too).

WineCountryUA

That has not existed for many years.
Your status puts you in an automated waitlist and you will be picked up by the first "experienced" (my word) agent that becomes available.
So you wait is short and you should get a more experience agent, but the range of experience is greater than the prior 1K line was. The agent screen reports your status and some agents you call themselves 1K agents on answering.

lincolnjkc

The broad technical term is Skills-Based Routing, or SBR (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skills-based_routing)

When you call UA and are identified as a 1K -- generally regardless of which number you call, they funnel to the same place except for MPSC and baggage resolution -- you get sent to a queue. As far as I can tell UA's implementation of SBR is a weight of expected hold time and agent "skill" level with your call going to a skilled agent if available (or within a certain expected hold threshold), but otherwise going to the "winner" of acceptable skill + acceptable hold time. When things really hit the fan SBR gives up and you'll get the "Your call may be answered by a less experienced agent, so please be nice" recording and long hold times.

How UA defines "skills" is less clear to me -- the 2023 proposed/tentative IAM contract defines RSSR as a "variety of ... service areas" and "specialty positions" as "including but are not limited to: Global Services" I would suppose an idle GS or other "specialty position", "premium", and "lead" are more likely to be at the head of the line for a high skill score but that is more supposition,

Interestingly I found the below addition to the tentative agreement which hopefully bodes well for agent skills over time:

Clcr

Hello, I am checking to see if anyone else is having an issue with 1kvoice email responses.
In two recent cases I’ve been told to contact 1kvoice as 1800…1000 doesn’t know the answer.
Over the past 4 weeks or so my emails to 1kvoice@ get generic responses from customercare@ stating to call in. The call in results in sending me to the website contact. Forcing further communication continues with questions not being answered from customer care via email, phone or website. Anyone else stuck in a similar loop?

And I’ve resigned to accepting no answers on some challenges but before I go free agent I’m just checking if it is just me.

cfischer

works fine for me. Average response time for routine things usually 2-6 hours.

Clcr

Thank you for the datapoint.