United Chat Payment Portal Is Suspicious
 

So I had to chat (or call) to reissue a ticket tonight. There was a small add/collect. The agent sent me a link to enter payment details. It was a credit card form but did not support autofill (for cards or addresses). And every box was free form text - I wasn't sure whether to abbreviate or not. Super sketchy but i knew I had the real deal since I had called the United number saved in my phone and responded to the text they sent me. Very bizarre and time consuming. If it's secure, why not just text your info directly???
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Because text messages are not secure.

I've used this a few times before without issue.
Agree, form is sketchy.
But can't say I'm surprised

Delta uses the same; it's provided by the chat vendor.

The person you are corresponding with in Chat - is likely in another country. With that in mind, there is a mantra of reasons United would rather use this form and probably an accompanying authorization system - instead of allowing an agent overseas to collect your personal information.

One of those reasons could be PCI Compliance, Chat Archives for Quality Assurance (can't have credit card #s), or... concerns about personal information with these outsourced agents. There are really too many reasons to list.

If I had to bet on it. I have to imagine, you fill out the form. The agent types in an amount, or... selects a corresponding ticket/transaction, and then the amount is immediately authorized like a manual sale. This prevents the agent from seeing any corresponding card information.

Thank you all for the responses! So it is an automated system? I guess I assumed the agent was merely reading what I typed in, hence my confusion.

So I guess that opens up more questions. How does it handle MC versus Mastercard or mastercar for example? Or Maine vs ME?

The interface just seems so archaic! I remember using a similar system many years ago when I volunteered at PBS.

most likely it's just for agents to read and then they manually input the details to their payment page on their side to process it

I wish forms would stop asking for type of card since the first digit indicates the type: 3 = AmEx, 4=Visa, 5=MC, 6=Discover (it is only useful to indicate if they don't accept a specific kind of card like AmEx). And I think most address matching works off the street number and zip/postal code to avoid word/spelling inconsistencies.

Chat Agent Experiences
 

It seems that user impressions of the UA Chat Agent is being talked about here in various threads but not a thread dedicated to it.

My use of the chat agent gets kicked off when the website or app is lacking functionality or just errors out. The biggest use of the chat is my FFCs getting into a state that it becomes unbookable or a FFC just disappears and will not show up despite using the lookup functionality ( I have not found a common theme to how FFCs get to this state ).
Side note: I learned a long time ago that DL loves to "disappear" FFCs so I keep a transaction log of all credit IDs, amounts and dates.

The UA Chat Agent rankings:
Professionalism: 10/10 - Always respectful and polite when working through the issues, No passive/aggressive or attitude issues.
Accuracy: 10/10 - The agent always confirms any transactions before executing them.
Accountability: 10/10 - One of the best things about the chat is that it instantly provides a running exact copy of the entire conversation that can be referred to at any time,
Speed: 7.5/10 - The agents might be multitasking other conversations as sometimes there is lag in the real time chat. I know sometimes they may have to talk to people that handle pricing but sometimes in normal conversation there is lag. UA is way ahead in this area compared to DL. A normal chat with UA takes around 20 minutes while DL is around 80 minutes.
Multitasking: 10/10 - I find phone conversations to be difficult to multitask, the agent may come back from a hold with me in a critical point of another topic The chat allows me to complete or bookmark my thought and then rejoin the chat.
Nice: The agent volunteers to complete my seat assignments ( small thing but it just saves me some time ).

Looking forward to hearing your experiences with the UA Chat Agent and/or other carrier chat agents.

After an extended chat interaction this last weekend, I would say your assessment is right on target. The problem was communication with LH regarding seat assignments disappearing, and the problem was diagnosed as a tech issue between the two. Overall, good customer service.

This is crazy but as a 10+ year 1K I haven’t yet used the chat agent but I have done so several times with AA (as a non status member) with very good results.

I have an upcoming booking where I could use some help but it’s not urgent enough to spend my time calling … how do I get the chat agent to come up? I’m not seeing where this is on the app.

I've used the chat agent about a dozen times. I've always had good experiences with the customer service, but the chat within the app is a poor experience. It often gets stuck "connecting" and never reconnects without forcing the app to stop and reconnecting. Or, the app decides not to notify me there is a new message from the agent. I've recently switched to the chat support via SMS to avoid the horrendous implementaiton within the app.

Just to be clear, this 'chat agent' is [still] a real person, not an AI bot, yes?

I assume so but you never know!

The chat starts out as a bot, but pretty quickly becomes real human agent if you ask. You will know it's a real person if you see a name (e.g. "Jane D") attached to the conversation.

I've used a few times on UA or AA, mostly when I don't feel like getting on the phone and/or a phone call would be disruptive to those around me. It should be noted that chat gives you access to Reservations during flight (assuming inflight wifi works)--this could be *extremely* valuable during IRROPS.

I find the chat agents' level of competence fine, but I get the sense some of them aren't too well-versed in complex issues, such as dealing with partners or the more arcane parts of the MileagePlus program.

They can sometimes take a while to respond. One annoying UX issue is that, if I am waiting for them to go research or do something, united.com can auto log-out. Logging back in typically refreshes the conversation, but on my last chat I couldn't do this. Fortunately we were almost finished up but this could be dangerous if you're not looking.

Overall, I like that the option exists, but I would still prefer to give UA a call if I'm dealing with something complex.