SkiAdcock

Got this from a 1k friend of mine. Any input?

BTW - if UA is reading this, he sent this out to his database & he's a consultant w/ several hundred folk on it, so that's probably not good in the p.r. dept for UA, as some of his database is CEO level. Oh well. Cheers.

But back to FT - any help?

"I got a 10% discount coupon from United, cause I'm such a good customer, and it's a slow period for them. The deal is you have to book on-line, book by the end of March and complete travel by the end of April, and up to six people can be on the ticket.

Well as it happens I have a client that wants me in London on the 25th of April, so I was feeling pretty lucky.

And off to UAL on-line I went. I tried every combination, moved depart and return dates, even considered changing planes in ORD, but the best price they had was $700. So times two that comes to $1400 and then minus 10% gets it down to $1260. Not bad. Just one problem - no seats. None, nadda, on any flight at that fair going to LHR at any time on any close day through any airport or direct. "Seat assignment at the airport." Yeah, right, like I'm going to do that on an 11hour international flight.

I called UAL's 1k desk and asked what I could do. Nutin they told me, it's an on-line deal. And, the ticket I have for JFK for today that I wasn't able to use, how do I apply that on-line? You can't.

I stewed a bit, kicked the cats, and just before I started to log in to Virgin, I thought, let's try it a different way. So I called the 1K desk and booked a non-stop flight. Guess what? They had seats, lots of them, nice ones. Aisles, econ plus, emergency rows - for the same exact flights I looked at on-line. And the ticket was a whopping $744. OK, so I lost my 10% but I did get to apply my missed JFK flight which made my cost $335. So for ~$1,100 I got a better deal than on-line with a 10% discount.

MY travel agent charges me about $100 a ticket to do this stuff. I just invested 65 minutes of billable time. I've lost a lot on being my own travel agent trying to get a 10% discount.

I'm this old, wrinkled, and gray headed, and still I have to learn things the hard way - there no hope."

PS - the old wrinkled, gray headed isn't accurate, but the experience was...

Any input other than dot.bomb strikes again? I'm trying to convert him & better half to FT. Cheers.

UNITED959

United.com is a such a joy.

I know exactly what he's talking about, and I've conveyed this problem to UA.

All I can say is that I hope UA aircraft maintenance is MUCH more together than the idiots who are responsible for the delivery of united.com. I haven't done it, but I'm sure one could find more value out of used toilet paper than that dumb website.

lucky9876coins

Yup, I completely hear what he is saying. Seriously, I wish there were a better, more complex answer, but it is just a case of da bomb striking again. Really is unfortunate...

Banton

As a 1K I have never filled out an after flight survey - too busy I guess - but I did yesterday and I will in the future.
When it came to website feedback portion I rated it: "Extremely Dissatisfied." I will do this everytime. I got the 2 - $50 ecerts for crossing 35,000 miles last month. Can't use them. Tried booking out to October and November, still can't use them. What a bait and switch. When they tabulate the concerns of people who take the time to give feedback, maybe they will get the message. Until then, pox on their website.

sftrvlr

It is completely frustrating using united.com! I have Sabre at my disposal, and can see exactly which flights I want to book, but every time I try to find those flights on the bomb (to use an e-cert, etc.), it won't offer them. I've even called the help desk and explained that I can see the flights available in Sabre, but the help desk says they see something different. And it's not a case of Sabre availability being wrong, we have direct access into Apollo, so I'm seeing what the United agent would see. If only there was a way to select each segment individually ...

Hopefully united.com will hire some people who know what they're doing one of these days.

dmodemd

Isnt it the promotion rules that are the problem? The % off is based on certain fare class availability... its a misleading promotion and causes more harm than good.

tann1001

It could be. There is also a "Jolly old London" sale going on right now. The 10% coupons dont work on those fares. Any search to London is likely to result in the sale fares coming up, hence no 10% can be applied.

Morrissey

Inasmuch as UA higher-ups read FT, and that we have been complaining about such things for years here, it is clear that UA doesn't care about this issue. Furthermore, if I were one of those CEO's reading this "database", I'd be annoyed that it contained drivel such as this and ask to be removed from it. I'd like to think that CEO's of non-airline companies spend their time worrying about more important things than this.

SkiAdcock

Well actually those CEOs pay him BIG bucks for his expertise & the reports he produces, etc, so they might be willing to cut him a bit of slack on the email re: united.bomb And if they fly UA, as a lot of the ones I've met through him do, they might appreciate the heads up on united.bomb for themselves & their employees, as they do dictact their company's travel policies and just as easy to turn UA OFF the pipeline if there are problems.

Your point that UA doesn't give 2 patooties re: united.bomb or its frequent flyers & revenue producers being unhappy w/ it is valid, and sadly has been valid for a # of years.

Cheers.

pynchonesque

But if he charged less, they'd have higher standards?

Maybe FT's 1Ks would complain less if UA charged BIG BUCKS for premium cabins.

Morrissey

So....these CEOs are paying him big bucks to listen to him talk about how he spent money and wasted 65 minutes of billable time to get a 10% discount? I can't think of any industry that has more complaining customers (whether the complaints are valid or not) than the airline industry. EVERY airline has customers which vow to "tell all my friends" about the (alleged) shoddy treatment they received from <insert any airline here>. I don't know how many CEOs you know, but given that fact, the ones that I know wouldn't base the travel policies of their companies on this anecdote of your friend (and neither the CEO of any reasonably-sized corporation nor his/her subordinates would be using UA 10% e-certs to book their BUSINESS travel anyway).