ssh

Have you asked UA to status match you to get you to a much better CS experience?

spin88

hey, venting is good... when I finally gave up on CO three years ago I was in vent city. Too many SFO-EWR/EWR on a 738 with only 14 F seats, all sold to discount F passengers, and little Plat me in 31" pitch behind the other 15 plats who had bought their ticket a week before I did.

I flew a wide body three times in 5 years on CO, when they were testing out the 762 SFO-IAH. Yes, its had an express machine (something UA has yet to figure out) but the BF seats are not that great, and hell... its not like I would ever get any, no SWUs and the lottery of a 752 upgrade was so bad, I was better off playing three card monte in NY. I always book my ticket too close to flight time and again CO had sold all of the seats for $150 more than my full Y...

oh, and the fun one hop I had on a IAH-SFO when they decided to fly a 733 and stop for gas in El Paso, or the IRROPs that stranded my in IAH overnight one day (as a Plat) and could not get me home when something bad happened.

Look, if I lived in NY, I'd pick AA (oh sorry off topic, Exec Plat is soo much better than Plat on CO). So focus SPIN, focus , if I lived on IAH I would pick CO....

Yes, COs web site is better, their inflight F food is better, their planes are cleaner, and generally their FAs are younger and slightly more service oriented. Their planes are newer and they have less MX as a result.

UA, e+ is better, a wide body is better, my upgrade percentage is better , the SWUs are better, and they are better in IRROPS.

lots of pros and cons...

Renard

+1

If one doesn't like UA, don't fly UA.

Renard

Very true.

Try calling CO customer care sometime....it'll be refreshing to told 'not our problem/not our fault' by their domestic call center folks.

SFOTurtle

I am a "lowly" 1P but have found the agents and response time with the Prem Exec dedicated line to be very good and helpful over the past several months especially, including quite a few calls to change award tickets, one with a complex routing. The one time that I wasn't satisfied with what I heard, I called back and got a better agent who solved my problem immediately.

kenziid3

I was trying to book a rt from HKG to IAH. The Reservation person's name was [deleted]. She priced out the rt flight at over $1,700. I then told her that I priced it out on the computer at $990.($650 hkg-sfo) plus ($245 sfo-iah).
I asked her why the price dif was so much. Her reply was this " Its probably the fuel surcharge). Now, I may be dumb but I'm not stupid. I know BS when I hear it, and that was pure BS. So I asked her to issue 2 seperate Tickets, at which point she refused and accused me of trying to "manipulate the system".

The first rt Hkg-Iah I booked in June 09 I made ther rookie mistake of booking point to point (HKG-IAH). With the DEQM I recieved 33,128. Booking 2 more DEQM's this way would leave me just short of 100,000 EQM's. But booking 2 seperate segments rt HKG-SFO-IAH computes out at 34,000 DEQM's. But according to [deleted], this would be "manipulating the system".

After wasting over $30 in long distance charges (calling from HKG) talking to several different other reservation people, I was able to book 2 additional flights segment by segment, for the lower prices and additional miles.

UAL does have a local Hong Kong number, the reps are very nice but their english makes for limited discourse.

In the end, I was able to "manipulate the system" and get what I wanted.

IF YOU SEE [deleted], say hello to [deleted] for me.

HeadInTheClouds

No, inadvertently, this is where the OP is 100% right. I dealt with the CO "no status" line many many times over the years as a NW plat, and I can tell you that it is night and day compared to UA if you have no status. No outsourced call centers, knowledgeable people.

But the UA 1K line is as good as the CO no status line, so on that front, it will definitely get better .

Oh, and forget E+, the biggest benefit to the OP BY FAR is that once he/she hits 1K, those three r/t's from HKG will (probably) be able to be upgraded, either Y>C or C>F. CO has nothing that comes remotely close to matching that.

HeadInTheClouds

Don't be too hard on her for that. What you're describing happens with all airlines, including CO. The truth is that it is simply the price they charge from A to B... she was just trying to answer a question that really didn't have any answer other than "cuz that's how much it costs".

If you can outsmart the system (which is indeed what you're doing), you have the tools available to you to do so. Do note though that you would lose your protection on the SFO-IAH flight should the HKG-SFO flight arrive late... i.e., if UA arrives to SFO late causing you to miss your onward flight, you may not have a valid ticket anymore. Though, as a 1K, UA is generally quite generous in such situations - but I can't speak for a no-status flyer.

mobilebucky

Sorry to hear your experience, we all flown with UA and deal with .bomb enough to know the limitations and "features". Like others have said already, here is the few things you should do if you still intend to fly UA in the future.

1. Ask for 90days status match challenge to 1P. You will have better experience as 1P than GM.
2. Try using multi cities to book your ticket, there has been plenty of instances where UA reservations cannot see the same price as .bomb. If that happens to you, make sure have a screenshot to prove it and have UA reservation forward/conference you with Websupport. They can work their magic there. This is based on my own experience as 1K, not sure they will do that as nobody in UA.
3. If you say you will qualify for 1K easily, E+ is nice, but you will love it more when you can upgrade using SWU on cheap W fare to business as 1K.

Hope you have better experience in the future. Welcome to UA side of FT.

snic

Do you mean espresso?

Or that the plane was very very fast?

hobo13

If you are planning to credit the UA flights to Mileage Plus anyway, what did it matter that CO joined *A? (I guess your CO status will get you lounge access, but is there something else I'm missing?)

emanon256

I have tried CO a few times due to the upcoming alliance change. I agree, CO has better food in domestic F and the CO website is way better! But IME the seats are much more comfortable in UA F and you can't beat E+. Also IME, the FA's are hit or miss on both, as are the GAs and Phone reps. I don't think I will go back to CO though because all of my flights are on 737 on CO, and 757 on UA. 737 is too small.

MileHighGuy

Evn tho it was obvious what the OP meant, I had to smile!

aauaflier

to the OP -
i'd be really careful about booking 2 separate tickets, if something goes wrong on the first one, and you're delayed, you may be SOL. plus, with their new policy of having to call before flight departure, assuming you are in the air, your ticket may be gone, and they may choose to void it and make you purchase a separate ticket back to IAH. i can just see it (not to you specifically, but to anyone in this situation)..."UA hits a new low" - reservation agent let me purchase 2 separate tickets, and when i missed my connection, they made me pay full Y for a ticket to my final destination.

if you are intent on booking it that way, i have had success getting a fare break priced in: so have 2 separate tickets on the same PNR. i can't even tell you the trouble this caused when there was a schedule change and i wanted a different route. 3 calls to the 1k desk and 3 supervisors later, i got it fixed. but at first they kept insisting i connect via xxx city because i had a fare break (and they were right, i was lucky to get an exception, and only cuz i begged and begged after the schedule change caused an 8hour connection which technically they didn't care about because it was a fare break, not a connection). in the old days, i got it held and booked on ual.com - but now one option is to use another booking tool such as expedia or travelocity.

the other thing is you can just book your 2 separate tickets on .bomb but again, i don't think it's worth the risk.

i hope that helps you. i can say i've flown many US airlines, and bad info like you experienced just doesn't phase me anymore. iv'e learned it's best if i know the rules and what can/cant' be done and i can help get us to the result. but if i had a call like yours, i'd shake it off, and call right back.

MatthewLAX

UA certainly isn't perfect, but on the whole I prefer them to CO in either cabin.

Service ---> UA
Food ---> CO
IFE ---> CO
Seat --> UA
FQTV --> UA

UA wins.