It was almost exactly an hour. I think we landed right as they were getting back from the fire alarm at Willis Tower. The plane at our gate prob couldn’t be dispatched. I was ok (as one could be) w the hour wait as my flight to ICT was showing 1.5 hours delayed. I’m sure some people with tighter connections were not doing as well. We landed at 645 gate at 745 and my flight left at 945. 2 full hours - no bag transfer.

Stood there for prob 3-4 min before being acknowledged. I could see her typing on her phone. If she was helping a customer they were the invisible kind.
And to include the word “quick” in there as if she didn’t have time for me was pretty off putting.

"our phone" is actually a company issued device that has the phone function turned off. It has work software and replaces an extra desktop computer, and it has some required software that isn't on the mainframes. See my above post about logging in to 4 different apps on "my phone"

Sad to read. I have connected through IAH multiple times, the last being 2022, and have always had friendly and helpful employees. I felt that IAH was one of the nicest UA hubs and that the old CO "work hard, play right" spirit still permeated through IAH. Even with construction and terminal changes/confusion in 2022, the employees couldn't have been nicer.

Hoping this was just a bad day or bad luck/chance and not a reflection on UA IAH going downhill as a whole.

I'm not sure if the OP was referring to a MAP or another device... IME it is fairly common (system-wide) to see an agent with at least two phone-sized devices on the podium -- I've always assumed one was their MAP the other was their personal phone (though I've also never seen an agent ignore a customer while playing with their own device...more often than not its just chilling and charging unless there's a lot of downtime)

Came here to say: SEARS tower!

Thank you, that is all…

This is FT! "They mishandled one of my bags at a hub" = "The whole operation is rotten, is hopeless and should be gutted and rebuilt! :mad:"

:D

I don't know how much you fly UA but this is par for the course these days. You were wise to be proactive, which should've been a plus, but probably would've had better luck calling the CS or Baggage Tracking phone numbers. My baggage went missing due to IRROPs at IAH, resulting in a re-route to LAX instead of SNA. I clearly told the agents re-routing me to LAX that I would pick up my baggage there. When we arrived at LAX, I waited about 30 mins at baggage claim before approaching the desk, telling them that my bags were missing. I gave them my bag tag numbers and they promptly looked them up and told me that they had arrived with my flight but that they were being routed to SNA for pickup? I asked them why, if I was having to provide my own transpo to OC, they would do that. They had no answers so I asked if they could recover my bags from the baggage holding area. They told me that it would take hours, which I found hard to believe but then, another pax who was standing within earshot told me that he'd been waiting 4 hours already for his bags to be found. Well, it was already 10:00 PM, so I accepted their offer of bag delivery to my in-laws' house in Laguna Beach, which they promised by the next morning. Nothing arrived by then so I called the baggage tracking phone # and was told that everything (5 larger bags) would be delivered by that afternoon. Afternoon passed to evening so I called again and was told it would be by the next morning. I'd been without clean clothes, etc. for 24 hours at that point. I woke up the next morning to find one bag sitting on the front porch. Needless to say, I called again and again, ad nauseum, over the next four days, only to be lied to in every instance. We finally got our last bag 5 days after we landed.

At United, "Good Leads The Way".

This says it all. UA is striving to be good, not better or great.

So if I was to give the benefit of the doubt and presume that it could’ve been a MAP, what work would she have been doing on that at the UAE entrance w no customer in front of her? It appeared to me the agents there were just door minders telling everyone when/if they could go down to the actual gate. The flight processing seemed to be happening down there just as it would at a normal gate.

That said I would’ve happily waited for her to finish texting her BF/GF or whatever if she would’ve just seemed the slightest bit interested in typing something, calling someone or otherwise acting to see where my golf clubs were.

UA agent here.

Not condoning the agents demeanor or attitude, just addressing your bag issue. On the concourse, typically we do not investigate issues regarding missing luggage. We can absolutely check to see where the last scan was, the bag routing and whether it's where it should be. But we do not coordinate with the ramp or other departments if a bag is determined to be missing or perceived to be in the wrong place. Generally, these issues are dealt with at your final destination baggage claim. What the agent should have done was checked the tag, if they determined there was an issue then advise you to address it with baggage service at your final destination.

At hubs and larger stations bags are typically not staged at the gate, they are kept in holding areas and on UAX flights it is not uncommon for bag loading to begin after boarding starts. At smaller stations and outstations where the ground crews work both the gates and ramp area interchangeably, they may be better equipped to locate missing bags but this is not practical at the hubs and the larger line stations and where I work we do not investigate bag related issues on the concourse.

I have had an agent at IAD call about my clubs from the concourse - to “T point” or something like that. They were located and brought over - this was in an IROPS situation. I understand for normal bags it’s not always practical. Golf clubs are easier to spot and they seem to be misplaced often. At a lot of airports they take a different route from an oversize area to the plane due to manual TSA screening.
At MCO, begging and pleading w UA staff is generally required to get them taken down to oversize. 🤷‍♂️

Tough to pick on IAH. It’s just “meh”.

It doesn’t boast a horrendous terminal setup/condition (IAD). It’s “meh”.

It doesn’t have terribly rude employees (EWR). It’s “meh”.

It doesn’t have particularly pleasant/sunny/interesting terminal areas (DEN/ORD/SFO). It’s just “meh”.

My only complaints - the PL is also “meh”, the UCs are bursting at the seams, and I seem to hit IAH with tstorms almost any time of year.

If you look up non-remarkable / mediocre in a dictionary, IAH would be in the photo.

”Meh”. All of it.

You are lucky! I have had extremely rude United employees on the B concourse at IAH. The boarding in IAH is just awful as well. This is not a one off. I have actually felt the PMCO hubs have been worse at customer service, but since COVID customer service at United has just been bad to mediocre at best. It seems people are more worried about contracts at United than providing a nice experience. There is little choice though in the U.S. anymore between AA, UA and Delta so not much the consumer can do. IAH has huge customer service issues and isn't much better than EWR these days. EWR still has the most unfriendly staff though in my experience at United.

Agreed -- which probably would have resulted in a similar post from the OP, frankly. The problem is, oddly, too much information. AirTags have allowed a lot of people -- myself included -- a peek behind the curtain, but they risk derailing a highly intricate operation.

It turned out that OP's bag was misplaced, but I would contend that there wasn't really any information to indicate that at the time of OP's complaint, and it's likely just confirmation bias playing a role here. Being "at the wrong gate" doesn't necessarily mean anything. For one thing, it could be a stale ping: I recently saw someone land at an airport on an AS flight, check their AirTag, and go to the gate agent saying their bag was left in Seattle. I had been speaking with the gate agent at the time, so I was in a position to ask what time the scan was -- and she saw it had been prior to takeoff. I believe she got her bag just fine. :) I've also noticed that (a) the low-power Bluetooth does not penetrate containers, so on a containerized flight, you won't get a ping until the container is unloaded and opened; (b) Apple is showing location data in a 3D space on a 2D map; and (c) there aren't a ton of compatible Apple devices in most baggage areas. On a narrowbody, I'll normally get a report from the bag upon landing, and often nothing else until it's approaching the chute and the gaggle of iPhone users present.

Thus, there are several possibilities other than the bag being misplaced; for example: (a) a stale ping being misinterpreted by a zealous passenger or (b) the bag being placed intentionally in a staging area prior to loading the aircraft, and simply looking like it's at another gate (whether that's because the gate area is physically above the baggage storage area or not).

And, thus, UA's policy that you outline here, to worry about the bags at the destination. OP's dissatisfaction is undqerstable but that kind of hands-on customer experience simply doesn't scale. Imagine if every AirTag user tried to initiate an investigation of every missing bag, sending people running after it. The baggage operation would spiral out of control, as the people chasing phantom pings would be taken away from their actual work of trying to get the majority of bags out on time.

RIght -- keeping the bags at the gate would be a disaster given how frequently gate assignments change. The correct place for the bag to be wouldn't be obvious from any 2D map, and probably wouldn't be obvious from any consumer-facing 3D map either, since I doubt that the baggage staging locations are labeled on Apple's multi-level airport maps.

I disagree; OP was too proactive.

That's standard, and nearly as I can tell fairly accurate in a lot of cases. It's mostly a question of manpower; they don't have people on staff to sit around and pull bags out from the giant bins full of them. In your case, you probably would have gotten them faster, though, because they should not have been in the general baggage area, but rather already segregated for delivery to Orange County.

I doubt very much that anyone was 'lying,' but rather giving their best estimate of the situation. However, I do urge you, despite your reticence to make any CS requests of United at all, please at least file a claim for anything you had to purchase due to the delays. The only way things will improve is if there are financial penalties for failure.

Incidentally, I've experienced exactly the same attitude at exactly the same place at IAH -- the people who guard the gate to the downstairs dungeon in B. I'm not sure that I'd paint the whole airport with that brush, though. :)