United Airlines shafts its customers (no lube)
Some comments really deserve a post of their own. My friend Nancy Rommelmann writes about her teenage daughter’s experience with United Airlines last month:
Last month, Tafv showed up for a United flight from LAX to Portland an hour early. The airport was mobbed; there were 300 people outside on the curb, not being allowed into the airport itself to catch their planes. Tafv asked to be allowed inside; request, denied. She called me; I spoke with two United people in India; neither could help me, though one did promise she could get on a flight the next day without the $100 change fee, but she’d have to go inside the terminal and speak with a rep. When I mentioned people were not being allowed inside the terminal, he suggested I call customer service. I told him, but it’s Sunday, they’re only open Mon. - Fri. He, of course, did not know this, but why would he? Who could possibly imagine an international airline that flies seven days a week having customer service open only five?
Tafv went back the next day. Surprise! Since she hadn’t spoken the day before to a rep, she had to pay the $100 change fee. When she got home, she said, “I will never fly them again.” Nor will I. Ever. Ever.
Can we please make United the new Dell?
Filed under: Business, Friends, Life, Manners, Treating Customers Well
In situations like this, which are obviously assbackward wrong (and I LOVE your blog item title, Jackie!)…this reminds me of the story Nancy told about Hillary and their landlord walking by as she was arguing about their MTV book…
Anyway, I think it pays to go to the top in situations like this. Drugstore.com nearly lost me in a similarly boneheaded way…and I’d hate that, because I’d have to go out to the drugstore on principle…but i would. I looked up their CEO’s name — a new woman running the company now, can’t remember her name exactly — but I guessed her e-mail based on other e-mails published for people at the company…and got a call from somebody in marketing who said the way I was treated was absolutely stupid and wrong. She gave me a $15 discount off my next order — all I’d asked for was $10, in recognition for them leaving something out of an order and making me need to go to the drugstore (ie, get dressed, leave the house, brave crowds the day before the 4th of July holiday when I was working my ass off on my book). The marketing lady also told me that the e-mails I’d forwarded would be used to train salespeople so this wouldn’t happen again.
In short, all I asked for was accountability. Mistakes happen, but when you make one, give me some show, more than “oops, sorry” to show that you’re accountable for what you did.
We have had similiar experiences with United and the airline is now on our black list, none of our engineers or sales people are allowed to use them. We have lost too much money relying on them.
And here’s the part where I admit that I’m flying United next month to San Francisco, because they had the only direct flight at the time I needed to travel. Sigh…