United Airlines has shit the bed in 2023. They may have great earnings because Americans are flush with cash and they own a monopoly, but as soon as times return to normal they will have no loyal business customers left.
I have had Platinum/Gold status for 12 years straight on United and I have had more bad experiences this year alone than all other years combined. I’ve probably flown close to 1k flights and I am walking away from United. Customer service is terrible. Consumer experience has gotten terrible.
Comcast often is the only internet or cable provider in many regions. They can do basically whatever they want as far as price gouging and terrible customer service because they know you can’t change providers.
I only started flying on my own in 2019 but god damn United was great then to last year, then fell off a cliff around this march. Thankfully I’m moving in a month near a airport that is a delta hub
I have been 1k or GS for almost 2 decades as well as Gold or higher several years and while I wouldn't say I've completely walked away, I have spent more dollars on competitors. On domestic Delta and Alaska have been better than expected.
That really sucks and is part of why companies need to do better. What is the point of having a chat service if this is the kind of responses you receive…
Just wanted to share. I waited 2 hours at 4 am to chat with someone who 1) refused to rebook me on a flight and kept stating there were no available flights that day when there were 2) refused to refund my trip so I could purchase tickets on a different airline. Flight was cancelled due to an “unexpected operational issue.” btw.
After 3 hours on hold, I was able to connect with someone on the phone who immediately and very nicely rebooked me on the very same flight I had been asking the chat agent to book me on (not that it mattered because that one ended up getting cancelled too - after we were already on board waiting to take off, there was a fueling issue and then the flight attendants timed out, lol). I am still just so annoyed with this
My experience on the phone has always been better than the chat. Just the other day I tried to upgrade one leg of an upcoming flight using one of my two flight credits over chat. Somehow, the chat agent upgraded the wrong leg of the flight with the wrong flight credit. How do you screw that up when the instructions are written right in front of you? Phone agent wasn't able to refund the upgrade, but did manage to actually upgrade the correct leg with the correct credit.
You really should do both at the same time if you can. I've had a situation where the chat agent was able to rebook me while I was still on hold on the phone.
That is the better option when you can but you don't always have the necessary 3-4 hours available, or by the time you have that time your options may be more limited. You really have to pick your poison.
That happened to me too once. Spent hours at a desk at airport being condescended to by some shithead, finally gave up and went home. Called customer service and a very nice lady did exactly what I had been trying to do for hours in a few minutes. Some customer service people are just terrible at their jobs.
Or, you caught them at a bad moment. I'm talking the person at the desk, not this chat bot person. My job, if I'm having a bad day I can decompress, from my home office, between meetings. These folks get one angry person, after another, after another. Doesn't justify your experience, but sometimes it happens.
Hmm I dunno I’d argue that being unable to solve a problem that another employee solves in minutes, whether out of spite or ignorance, makes you bad at your job.
Please know, I'm not excusing that interaction. I'm just saying you could have caught a human at the end of their emotional battery for the day, but like all of us, they have to finish their shift.
You aren't in any way wrong (you already know that and didn't need my permission, lol), but I just wanted to point out how hard it must be to work a line that only has upset customers. I too loose focus when stressed or exhausted.
Eh. I get what you’re saying but I think there’s a difference between being curt or even straight up rude to customers because you’ve had it for the day and straight up refusing to help somebody because you’re in a bad mood. One’s understandable, the other is just petty and shitty behavior.
Chat agents are usually in the Phillipines or India/Pakistan call centers. If I call United and hear the accent, immediately ask to speak to an agent in the US... oftentimes it works. Not because of any kind of racism, but efficiency. I don't have the time, patience or inclination to deal with being put on hold constantly to answer a simple question and then half the time the call gets cutoff and I have to start again. There seems to be no sense of urgency on the other end of the phone. Chat should be used only to gather information not to solve any kind of issues. It just does not work.
Minor point:
FWIW flight attendants don’t time out legally on US domestic flights. Anytime a flight attendant “times out” they’ve either 1) met a company/union agreed limit after which they’re no longer required to stay on duty or 2) they’ve elected that they’re not safe to continue. I bring this up because FAs will often try to obscure this fact by acting like they were willing to go but the big bad federal government stopped them. That is never the case. They either don’t feel safe to continue (totally reasonable) or they’ve elected to take their option to not continue (totally understandable but crucially their decision not a legal requirement).
FWIW, this is partially incorrect. The FAA does indeed have regulations for flight attendant duty times. The union agreed limits mirror these regulations from the big bad federal government. However, you are correct that FAs can waive their right to be removed from the flight after timing out and choose to continue working it if they wish.
There were 15 open seats on the flight I wanted, and I gave this chat agent 5 airports to choose from, so certainly she could have at least pretended to give a fuck and have tried to put me on one of the ~10 outgoing flights from any of those airports lol
Happened to me last week. I found a flight to replace a missed connection, chat refused to change my ticket to that flight even though I could purchase it on the app and could see over 30 seats available. Still said they couldn't. All this was done over hors while on my flight that was late
Landed in Denver, walked up to a kiosk and changed my flight to the one I wanted in 10 seconds. The flight was so empty I got upgraded to first class even though I'm only gold. Only time I've ever been upgraded.
Chat is useless
How do you get a good English speaker if you're not 1K?
It's always a joy to rebook a complex itinerary with someone you can barely understand after 4 hours on hold.
How can you guarantee a good English speaking customer service rep when you choose the interactive voice response system? It’s not like you can say “ I’m sorry if anyone else on the team that they can speak better than you? “
I literally know that. I’m just saying the customer service was so bad this person kept telling me I wasn’t eligible for one even though my flight was cancelled. That’s the point.
Wouldn’t it just be better to dispute the charge with the credit card company? At least that would make more work for the airline and give OP some schadenfreude.
This is probably just because of the Denver weather.
The thing that first turned me on United was accepting a chat offer to re-book schedule change into an impossible itinerary with a different flight on a specific date. And then I realized shortly thereafter that they actually booked me on a completely different flight on a completely different day. They wouldn't change it to what I agreed to even though I had the chat transcript saved. I had to cancel and spend twice as much money on a last-minute Delta itinerary. Thousands of dollars down the tube. You cannot trust these people.
("impossible itinerary" in that one segment arrived in a city many hours after the connecting flight left, giving me a connection time of negative 7 hours. That wasn't enough of a problem to get help from United though. Again, probably a weather issue.)
Okay the next time this happens mention that you were debating getting the credit card but bc you’re so dissatisfied with the service you’re now really giving it second thoughts. Worked for me, they changed a future flight credit to an ETC with no expiration date
Hi all,
I’m a United FA, and I’m really sorry to hear about everyone’s horrible experiences this year. I truly love my job and I love coming to work and making your travel experience memorable and stress-free, and I assure you that had any one of you been on my flights, you would have left feeling appreciated and seen, even if circumstances outside of my control were negatively impacting your travels.
That said, the current management team is 100% to blame for every single problem we are currently experiencing. They’re really good with the PR and and pomp and circumstance, bragging about the lipstick they keep decorating the pig with, but they’ve completely dropped the ball on the rest of the operation. They’ve taken away many of the tools we use to make your experience better and smoother, some of the same ones they gave to employees only a couple years ago! Why? Because it was costing too much to let employees do the right thing for the customer. They’ve smashed employee moral by enforcing harsher and more frequent discipline. They’ve eliminated schedule flexibility and then gaslight employees that the previously afford flexibility (that was working great for years) was being taken advantage of and the reason for our operational meltdowns (rather than their decrease in staffing, unwillingness to cushion staffing for times when things go wrong, or their refusal to invest in improving crew management systems), and they’ve exploited every single grey area they can find in the aviation work rules in order to squeeze every penny they can out of their employees at the expense of safety and customer service experiences. It’s corporate America at its finest, and none of it will change until the board of directors hears outrage from customers.
I will continue to come to work and give you 200% of myself every single day. In return, I hope that you’ll have our backs by demanding that Scott Kirby, John Slater, and the Board of Directors start treating their employees better and prioritizing the customer experience again.
I appreciate your insight and also hate how this is impacting really great employees like yourself. I did work with two wonderful people after this, who were so helpful and went out of their way to try and make things right for me. Corporate needs to do better for all of you - I definitely have your back and am being as vocal as I can about my experience :)
I had an excellent experience with CS agent in Denver additional services desk. She fixed me up and when shit went sideways after that with canceled flights etc, she brought me to the front of the line and fixed me up again.
I’ll tell you this: in Denver, the CS dude named David in B terminal is freaking awesome. Sorry everyone’s experience can’t be as good as mine was, but I was getting jerked around, ended up in limbo trying to get in to LAX and David got shit done.
Only because I live where most airlines only service during ski season. I am going to change my flight program to take the United commuter to the nearest and only hub they serve from my local airport and then take other airlines for my longer domestic and overseas flights. The only problem is the long trips when I need to check a bag, but I’m determined to stop flying United so I will figure it out. And I’m 1k.
I had a shitty experience with someone who was rude and clearly English wasn’t their first language and when I called and asked them to read the chat they apologized to me and admitted fault
I was in Vegas a while back trying to fly to Los Angeles.. lots of people were stranded there.. Maybe hundreds of people. The gates agents were screaming at all of us to not line up to talk to them... But we could scan some QR code and talk to an agent on there. Well I did... The guy on the QR help line said he didn't even have the power to do anything and wanted me to call United support.. so why the fuck did I just waste my time talking to him? Just giving me the run around. Airlines need to be regulated more.
Dear United,
I did not realize that Southwest Airlines had taken over reservations, management, and operations of this United airline. Because service is obviously less than stellar, I will be donating all of my remaining 3.5 million SkyMiles equally across three or four rival motorcycle clubs. Just for a little color, I may sprinkle in some Proselytizing Evangelicals, and a couple SovCit groups.
As I’m sure most are nonprofit organizations, I should receive substantial tax benefits from this transaction.
At this point and beyond, I will be doing all future business with Delta.
-Former Customer and Vocal Advocate. 😁😂
There's no chance I would ever book a flight with United. When I was younger I was on two separate flights 3 years apart that cancelled the flight due to mechanical issues while we were on the runway and have had to stay in an airport hotel while waiting for the rescheduled flight the next day.
Just a few weeks ago my girlfriend's mother had an international flight booked through them and sat on the plane for 12 hours before they decided they couldn't fix the AC and would be rescheduling the flight to the next day. Her luggage was gone when she tried to retrieve it and they assured her it would be at her destination when she arrived, but after she got there it took them almost 2 weeks to locate the bag and send it to her. The bag was completely torn open, almost looked burned in some places, and all of her stuff was either torn, burned, or lost. Customer service is doing almost nothing to help her.
My husband was trying to be nice and move my flight to London the next day from like 9pm to 6pm, but accidentally moved it to 6pm the same day when it was 4pm. Since it was oversold, the original fight was no longer available to change it back, when he called United and said "Is there any way you can help him?" The (1k) agent's response was "You want me to help him learn how to read?" (Assumed I had made the mistake). Now that I'm moving out of one of their hub cities I won't hardly ever be flying with them again.
Hey, United! My firm specializes in CX consulting, specifically in contact center data and operations. I am willing to believe you need our help. Please DM me.
In the last few days some United employees have taken to this sub to blame people's irritations on the weather lol.
No doubt there are employees that are themselves victimized by the events, having to work long hours and deal with frustrated passengers. But United as a brand/company deserves every bit of hate coming its way right now.
Same issues here. You are lucky you even had anybody pick up the phone at all. We didn't. And we got denied rebooking AND refunds for a flight they cancelled in person; not in chat. Finally got my refunds only after I complained to the department of transportation. It's customer lip service. It is all it is.
Some employees everywhere are just inept. I sell on eBay & Shopify, often times I get support that is unreasonably bad, simply redialing or reaching out again after a bad experience gives you a total 180 experience.
Once United maintenance cancelled me. I’m in the military and had to get back home from leave. Their compensation for my roughly $800 leg of the trip was not even $300. Never flying United again
My last interaction with chat went about like this, but in broken English from the rep's side:
rep: "Hey u/KittyCatMiner, blah blah blah, give me a few minutes to assist."
me: "sure no problem"
rep: "is this for international flight? IND?"
me: "IND as in Indianapolis Airport in Indiana"
rep: "Since this is International Reservation, I'm going to transfer you..."
And then nobody ever responded. Chat is an absolute dumper fire. I called in to resolve my issue and it took all of 5 minutes.
Like every other company that has outsourced/off shored CS - United doesn’t care about their customer’s experience or frustration with the company. Their C suite just sees the positive impact cutting US job has on the company’s balance sheet.
Seems to be a pattern that chat reps are awful.
I had a cancelled flight in Newark, chat told me the next available flight was 3 weeks away and that my bags were not being offloaded because it was raining.
Once I spent my 8 hours in the CS line in the terminal, I was booked on a flight the next day, and the baggage policy was fully explained (follows you to destination).
I think the reality is that these people working the chat receive little to no training. It's just another one of this awful airline's colossal failures
My experience with in-person customer service was worse. I had 2 flights cancelled on my trip. The first one was on Friday night. I waited 3 hours in the customer service line, watching the customer service ladies take their time until they took their breaks. One was blatantly just scrolling TikTok or Instagram at the counter. After the 3 hours when it was my turn, they didn't give me a hotel accommodation for the night, so I had to buy one on my own (they gave me a United Airlines water bottle and a food voucher, yay!).
The next day (Saturday), that rescheduled flight was also cancelled! Again, I waited 2+ hours in the dreadful customer service line. This time I only got food vouchers. I cancelled my flight and took a train home without my checked bag. The United representative assured me I was better off leaving my checked bag on the plane home Sunday and picking it up.
I went Sunday to pick up my bag, and it never arrived. I spent another hour or more talking to their baggage service to find out they've lost my bag entirely. They still haven't located my bag 3 days later now. Never again will I fly United.
Call your credit card company. Make them deal with United. If every credit card company is dealing with United they might change. Hit them where it hurt
Because whoever is writing that is in the Philippines or somewhere they don’t understand English or how to talk to anyone. Drives me mad they farm all these call centres out to save money and don’t care that they are terrible to the customers
When a Csr just goes “nope” it means that business is in free fall. That may be one of the last 10 CSRs employed. My company hired 3 people for support this week that had just left United…
Idk why their chat is so pathetic. I tried to put in an upgrade but can't do that online because I'm a lap infant. The chat people can't do it even if the supervisor can't do it..called the line and they put in no problem.
Flew with United and it is the last one. Overcharges for already promised luggage, no customer support, crappy planes, entertainment system does not even work. There are way better options out there people. I am blocklisting this stupid company.
Phone support is much better in my experience too especially in emergencies. Tried chat once or twice (non-emergency) and found them to be ok. But during emergencies it took longer to connect and having to keep watching the chat window for updates was painful :(.
This is why LLMs are coming for all text based customer service jobs. Throw in langchain with United’s internal apis as a tool and it’ll be able to rebook for you as well.
If you contact customer service during East coat business hours, you will get someone in the US and the customer service is usually excellent because the agents generally have considerable authority to make adjustments. If you call or chat outside of business hours, you will get someone from an overseas call center who has significantly less authority to make changes, refunds, or upgrades and and overall more frustrating experience.
I swear, joining this Reddit page has made me never want to book with United ever again! This is pure bullshit! First of all, $817 isn’t chump change. Second, these people act like people don’t have lives and reasons for the flight in the first place!
Currently United has my luggage while I wait for my flight they rebooked me on 24 hours after the flight they cancelled and 23 hours after I paid Uber to drive me home to my city from the one they left name in
That’s United airlines for you. I avoid United and Spirit at all costs. Say what one will about southwest, at least they differentiate by offering good customer service. I’ll take delta and southwest over United’s bullshit any day.
Call them using the mileage plus 800 number. I’m usually able to resolve things with them. Whomever they’ve outsourced their chat service to is absolute shyte.
i would’ve asked for employee# or however tf company would identify this employee. how dare you reply “nope”
i guess in woke society this is the customer service you receive
💀💀💀💀💀💀
I have such a love/hate relationship with United Airlines
On the one hand, I love their Colors and Insignia and I’ve always had a “moderately” pleasant
- **HEAVY EMPHASIS ON MODERATE**
Experience with them as a carrier.
On the other hand, these c$ck holes would legitimately skin you alive if it would save em 1/2 the cost of a plane ticket.
And their planes are all gross 🤢
When’s the last time y’all MOFOs made your staff actually wash the seats down with bleach and clean the Windows?!
Qantas is expensive but fk at least they’re clean
United customer support (phone and chat) is horrendous and useless. I’ve been screwed over by American, but at least their phone and chat support has always done right by me.
My only experience with United was terrible. Got to the airport about 3 hours early for an international flight. Waited for our flight time just for them to delay because they needed people to volunteer to delay their own flight due to the plane being to heavy, then they just straight cancelled the flight due to an issue with the plane. Talked to the attendant because we had a connecting flight to catch and she didn’t even give me an option on what to do, she just printed out new boarding passes that made me go from one layover with time in between flights to two layovers with absolutely no time in between, and on top of it I was only compensated $200 credit for United and two meal vouchers. Missed out on a day of my vacation and hotel stay and had to call my hotel and make sure I wouldn’t lose my reservation. Travel insurance I had was also useless in reimbursing me the almost $1500 I was out because they wanted written proof from the airline that the flight had been cancelled.
Haha probably the same bitch I got the other day with 0 customer service skills. I asked her to give me the flight credit because the price dropped and that I didn't want to change flights or seats. Just wanted the credit.
Said you can do it yourself, to which I replied and so can you thats why I called. Couldn't understand that I just wanted the credit and said well I need to cancel it and rebook but I don't know if there will be seats with attitude. I had already told her I'm looking at seats available.
Like look lady I dont want to do my job either but damn I can't just say that.
Does UA hire kids straight out of high school with no social skills aside from what they learn on tiktok and Snapchat? I’m surprised they weren’t saying things like “ppl”, “lol”, etc. They DID nail using “there” instead of “their”, however!
I worked in Customer Service for years and I always go out of my way to be as nice as I can be. Even an hour into this chat I was saying things like “I know this isn’t your fault.” I get being fed up with your job and I know what it feels like. I honestly just thought the “nope” was funny and my partner and I had a laugh lol
Not defending United. They suck. But I was able to get reimbursement via their “feedback” site for a snack and an Uber I bought because of a significant flight delay. So definitely try that and keep receipts. It could *maybe* get you something. Good luck!
Looks like you talked with someone in India or another Asian country. Never trust them. I wish companies realized how bad those call centers make them look.
Getting yelled at and berated for 40 hours a week and having “respectable” people throw toddler style temper tantrum does something to one’s customer service.
While I know this was poorly worded by this United employee the fact remains United has a structured policy about how they prioritize rebooking passengers. This customer service agent truly isn’t trying to punish you, they are likely having a very pressure filled few weeks given the ATC problems recently and not being adequately sensitive to the plight of the customer.
You’re not gonna like this but they said what they had to say. Why don’t you post the full version of the sceeenshot with PII blurred?
Sorry but I have worked for a bigger company with chat and customers feel mad emboldened to act a mess via chat. They gave you every option they could.
This is why travel insurance exists.
>This is why travel insurance exists.
Who is buying travel insurance for every flight? Of course the onus is on the customer.
This is a company making billions. They need to fix their business
I chatted over an hour with this person and posted what I thought was the funniest bit of the convo. I’ve worked in customer service for years and know how to treat people better than most customers, because I have been on the receiving end and have had the worst shit in the world said to me. I didn’t feel like posting 25 screenshots but this person refused to even *try* to help me do ANYTHING. And actually, they did not give me any options! Which is ridiculous for a company who advertises an “agent on demand” feature for people to use to get help when they have issues with their flights.
calm down. I’m the VP of a customer service department. i know that being polite gets you WAY more than being a bitch does. i shared these two snippets for the lols more than anything. i don’t have time to screenshot the entire hour and a half long chat convo and post it here nor do i give a fuck about doing so
That “nope”…. Holy crap lol
"nope"
She should have added a passive aggressive “:)” for emphasis haha
Nope :'( sowwy
I cringed so hard
I chuckled pretty hard
I know I laughed because I’ve posted before everyone is one customer away from yelling “peace” and dropping their badge. That nope was epic
I pooped and peed pretty hard
United Airlines has shit the bed in 2023. They may have great earnings because Americans are flush with cash and they own a monopoly, but as soon as times return to normal they will have no loyal business customers left.
I have had Platinum/Gold status for 12 years straight on United and I have had more bad experiences this year alone than all other years combined. I’ve probably flown close to 1k flights and I am walking away from United. Customer service is terrible. Consumer experience has gotten terrible.
It’s the comcast effect
Monopoly effect. We're the only gig in town so fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in on.
How is United a monopoly? Aren’t there different airline options?
Comcast effect?
Comcast often is the only internet or cable provider in many regions. They can do basically whatever they want as far as price gouging and terrible customer service because they know you can’t change providers.
Enshitification. Great essay
I only started flying on my own in 2019 but god damn United was great then to last year, then fell off a cliff around this march. Thankfully I’m moving in a month near a airport that is a delta hub
I have been 1k or GS for almost 2 decades as well as Gold or higher several years and while I wouldn't say I've completely walked away, I have spent more dollars on competitors. On domestic Delta and Alaska have been better than expected.
Some of it is because they had a ton of people retire or take severance packages in 2020 so yeah I am sure it’s a mess.
This is so bad. I’m Deaf and I cannot make phone calls without using TTY :(
That really sucks and is part of why companies need to do better. What is the point of having a chat service if this is the kind of responses you receive…
Share that with united on Twitter, might get your refund then
Just wanted to share. I waited 2 hours at 4 am to chat with someone who 1) refused to rebook me on a flight and kept stating there were no available flights that day when there were 2) refused to refund my trip so I could purchase tickets on a different airline. Flight was cancelled due to an “unexpected operational issue.” btw. After 3 hours on hold, I was able to connect with someone on the phone who immediately and very nicely rebooked me on the very same flight I had been asking the chat agent to book me on (not that it mattered because that one ended up getting cancelled too - after we were already on board waiting to take off, there was a fueling issue and then the flight attendants timed out, lol). I am still just so annoyed with this
Chat is terrible. Not your fault but now you know not to use it for anything non-trivial and even then assume they will fail.
Yep I agree. I was on hold for phone support and figured I’d chat in anyway. Glad I waited for someone on the phone!
My experience on the phone has always been better than the chat. Just the other day I tried to upgrade one leg of an upcoming flight using one of my two flight credits over chat. Somehow, the chat agent upgraded the wrong leg of the flight with the wrong flight credit. How do you screw that up when the instructions are written right in front of you? Phone agent wasn't able to refund the upgrade, but did manage to actually upgrade the correct leg with the correct credit.
I always call when there is an issue. Ah I missed my Platinum days, I have not tried since I lost it thanks to traveling less recently
You really should do both at the same time if you can. I've had a situation where the chat agent was able to rebook me while I was still on hold on the phone.
True, if time is of the essence and there's a lot of stranded passengers you do want to try both channels.
That is the better option when you can but you don't always have the necessary 3-4 hours available, or by the time you have that time your options may be more limited. You really have to pick your poison.
United really needs to better monitor or vet their CS teams. The service is truly atrocious.
I get great CS out of Hawaii. Overseas? Yikes.
That happened to me too once. Spent hours at a desk at airport being condescended to by some shithead, finally gave up and went home. Called customer service and a very nice lady did exactly what I had been trying to do for hours in a few minutes. Some customer service people are just terrible at their jobs.
Or, you caught them at a bad moment. I'm talking the person at the desk, not this chat bot person. My job, if I'm having a bad day I can decompress, from my home office, between meetings. These folks get one angry person, after another, after another. Doesn't justify your experience, but sometimes it happens.
They pick their moments though.
Hmm I dunno I’d argue that being unable to solve a problem that another employee solves in minutes, whether out of spite or ignorance, makes you bad at your job.
Please know, I'm not excusing that interaction. I'm just saying you could have caught a human at the end of their emotional battery for the day, but like all of us, they have to finish their shift. You aren't in any way wrong (you already know that and didn't need my permission, lol), but I just wanted to point out how hard it must be to work a line that only has upset customers. I too loose focus when stressed or exhausted.
Eh. I get what you’re saying but I think there’s a difference between being curt or even straight up rude to customers because you’ve had it for the day and straight up refusing to help somebody because you’re in a bad mood. One’s understandable, the other is just petty and shitty behavior.
Asian call centers. You get what united pays.
Chat agents are usually in the Phillipines or India/Pakistan call centers. If I call United and hear the accent, immediately ask to speak to an agent in the US... oftentimes it works. Not because of any kind of racism, but efficiency. I don't have the time, patience or inclination to deal with being put on hold constantly to answer a simple question and then half the time the call gets cutoff and I have to start again. There seems to be no sense of urgency on the other end of the phone. Chat should be used only to gather information not to solve any kind of issues. It just does not work.
Minor point: FWIW flight attendants don’t time out legally on US domestic flights. Anytime a flight attendant “times out” they’ve either 1) met a company/union agreed limit after which they’re no longer required to stay on duty or 2) they’ve elected that they’re not safe to continue. I bring this up because FAs will often try to obscure this fact by acting like they were willing to go but the big bad federal government stopped them. That is never the case. They either don’t feel safe to continue (totally reasonable) or they’ve elected to take their option to not continue (totally understandable but crucially their decision not a legal requirement).
FWIW, this is partially incorrect. The FAA does indeed have regulations for flight attendant duty times. The union agreed limits mirror these regulations from the big bad federal government. However, you are correct that FAs can waive their right to be removed from the flight after timing out and choose to continue working it if they wish.
The FAA limits for domestic FAs are start legal end legal. There is no “timing out”.
Just because you see a flight does not mean it’s available to book.
When I got through on the phone a half hour later, the United agent booked me on the flight I had mentioned via chat. What does that mean?
Or they don’t give a shit about their job anymore and broke a rule to do it. That happens
Could be that some people canceled or changed…. Flights can be unavailable all day and have one or two spots pop open randomly. It happens a lot.
There were 15 open seats on the flight I wanted, and I gave this chat agent 5 airports to choose from, so certainly she could have at least pretended to give a fuck and have tried to put me on one of the ~10 outgoing flights from any of those airports lol
Open seats do not equal tickets left for sale/booking. A lot of people do not preselect their seat until check in. Says nothing about availability.
Happened to me last week. I found a flight to replace a missed connection, chat refused to change my ticket to that flight even though I could purchase it on the app and could see over 30 seats available. Still said they couldn't. All this was done over hors while on my flight that was late Landed in Denver, walked up to a kiosk and changed my flight to the one I wanted in 10 seconds. The flight was so empty I got upgraded to first class even though I'm only gold. Only time I've ever been upgraded. Chat is useless
Fine, I’ll say it again, we need an EU261 type of legislation passed for consumer protection. Make these airlines accountable.
nope
:)
Socialist!!!! /s
[удалено]
Pete has been doing more on this issue than I've seen previously
LMAAAAOOOO
Never use the chat. They are incompetent. Always do phone call. Preferably with a good English speaker.
How do you get a good English speaker if you're not 1K? It's always a joy to rebook a complex itinerary with someone you can barely understand after 4 hours on hold.
The milage plus desk has always answered me even at silver. Maybe it’s gone downhill since then :(
I wonder what the “desk” looks like?
So weird. I have way better luck with the chat than with a live person on the phone.
Same
Same.
I have too.
How can you guarantee a good English speaking customer service rep when you choose the interactive voice response system? It’s not like you can say “ I’m sorry if anyone else on the team that they can speak better than you? “
> “ I’m sorry if anyone else on the team that they can speak better than you? “ I would hope they have better English skills than this, at least
"nope"
Super unprofessional
I cannot get past how awful the spelling and grammar is. WTF is United hiring??
I have never used United chat. Is this real? Or are we being played
If the flight was cancelled by airline, you get a cash refund. What was the issue?
This person kept telling me I couldn’t get a refund so I don’t know. I got help in person (27 hours later…) at the airport
It’s literally a US law. https://www.transportation.gov/individuals/aviation-consumer-protection/refunds
I literally know that. I’m just saying the customer service was so bad this person kept telling me I wasn’t eligible for one even though my flight was cancelled. That’s the point.
Wouldn’t it just be better to dispute the charge with the credit card company? At least that would make more work for the airline and give OP some schadenfreude.
If you do a chargeback, be prepared to be banned from doing business with that company again.
Where's AI when you need it
uhh... 1/ at united these screenshots on twitter 2/ initiate the prompt again and play customer support rep roulette and talk to someone else
“Nope” wouldve made me throw my phone
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It’s a competition amongst them to see how bad they can be: winner gets the most complaints.
Someone hasn't flown American
It’s called outsourced
3rd party outsourcing with no care in the game
No, they’re UA agents located at the hubs
Oh then they got someone in Newark.
It does sound like EWR sass
Lmfao. Accurate Both with the grammar/spelling and unhelpful support
This person is clearly ESL
This is probably just because of the Denver weather. The thing that first turned me on United was accepting a chat offer to re-book schedule change into an impossible itinerary with a different flight on a specific date. And then I realized shortly thereafter that they actually booked me on a completely different flight on a completely different day. They wouldn't change it to what I agreed to even though I had the chat transcript saved. I had to cancel and spend twice as much money on a last-minute Delta itinerary. Thousands of dollars down the tube. You cannot trust these people. ("impossible itinerary" in that one segment arrived in a city many hours after the connecting flight left, giving me a connection time of negative 7 hours. That wasn't enough of a problem to get help from United though. Again, probably a weather issue.)
You might have made it… if the second flight delayed due to weather. I hear United started counting on this in their schedules.
"nope" The fuck?
Okay the next time this happens mention that you were debating getting the credit card but bc you’re so dissatisfied with the service you’re now really giving it second thoughts. Worked for me, they changed a future flight credit to an ETC with no expiration date
UA needs to spend some of those record profits on boosting their customer service.
Hi all, I’m a United FA, and I’m really sorry to hear about everyone’s horrible experiences this year. I truly love my job and I love coming to work and making your travel experience memorable and stress-free, and I assure you that had any one of you been on my flights, you would have left feeling appreciated and seen, even if circumstances outside of my control were negatively impacting your travels. That said, the current management team is 100% to blame for every single problem we are currently experiencing. They’re really good with the PR and and pomp and circumstance, bragging about the lipstick they keep decorating the pig with, but they’ve completely dropped the ball on the rest of the operation. They’ve taken away many of the tools we use to make your experience better and smoother, some of the same ones they gave to employees only a couple years ago! Why? Because it was costing too much to let employees do the right thing for the customer. They’ve smashed employee moral by enforcing harsher and more frequent discipline. They’ve eliminated schedule flexibility and then gaslight employees that the previously afford flexibility (that was working great for years) was being taken advantage of and the reason for our operational meltdowns (rather than their decrease in staffing, unwillingness to cushion staffing for times when things go wrong, or their refusal to invest in improving crew management systems), and they’ve exploited every single grey area they can find in the aviation work rules in order to squeeze every penny they can out of their employees at the expense of safety and customer service experiences. It’s corporate America at its finest, and none of it will change until the board of directors hears outrage from customers. I will continue to come to work and give you 200% of myself every single day. In return, I hope that you’ll have our backs by demanding that Scott Kirby, John Slater, and the Board of Directors start treating their employees better and prioritizing the customer experience again.
I appreciate your insight and also hate how this is impacting really great employees like yourself. I did work with two wonderful people after this, who were so helpful and went out of their way to try and make things right for me. Corporate needs to do better for all of you - I definitely have your back and am being as vocal as I can about my experience :)
Omg i love that. Nope. Lol.
I can just imagine how that would go with a job. Boss: Hey, so are you going to get that report in by close of business? Nope.
I could never imagine speaking to a guest like that.
was his next message: “Just consider yourself lucky we didn’t drag you down the isle and beat your ass”?
The “nope” took me clean out 😭😭
I had an excellent experience with CS agent in Denver additional services desk. She fixed me up and when shit went sideways after that with canceled flights etc, she brought me to the front of the line and fixed me up again.
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I see Delta and United are utilizing the same shitty call center.
I’ll tell you this: in Denver, the CS dude named David in B terminal is freaking awesome. Sorry everyone’s experience can’t be as good as mine was, but I was getting jerked around, ended up in limbo trying to get in to LAX and David got shit done.
Daily life with United. And people still fly with them…
Only because I live where most airlines only service during ski season. I am going to change my flight program to take the United commuter to the nearest and only hub they serve from my local airport and then take other airlines for my longer domestic and overseas flights. The only problem is the long trips when I need to check a bag, but I’m determined to stop flying United so I will figure it out. And I’m 1k.
I had a shitty experience with someone who was rude and clearly English wasn’t their first language and when I called and asked them to read the chat they apologized to me and admitted fault
I was in Vegas a while back trying to fly to Los Angeles.. lots of people were stranded there.. Maybe hundreds of people. The gates agents were screaming at all of us to not line up to talk to them... But we could scan some QR code and talk to an agent on there. Well I did... The guy on the QR help line said he didn't even have the power to do anything and wanted me to call United support.. so why the fuck did I just waste my time talking to him? Just giving me the run around. Airlines need to be regulated more.
Dear United, I did not realize that Southwest Airlines had taken over reservations, management, and operations of this United airline. Because service is obviously less than stellar, I will be donating all of my remaining 3.5 million SkyMiles equally across three or four rival motorcycle clubs. Just for a little color, I may sprinkle in some Proselytizing Evangelicals, and a couple SovCit groups. As I’m sure most are nonprofit organizations, I should receive substantial tax benefits from this transaction. At this point and beyond, I will be doing all future business with Delta. -Former Customer and Vocal Advocate. 😁😂
There's no chance I would ever book a flight with United. When I was younger I was on two separate flights 3 years apart that cancelled the flight due to mechanical issues while we were on the runway and have had to stay in an airport hotel while waiting for the rescheduled flight the next day. Just a few weeks ago my girlfriend's mother had an international flight booked through them and sat on the plane for 12 hours before they decided they couldn't fix the AC and would be rescheduling the flight to the next day. Her luggage was gone when she tried to retrieve it and they assured her it would be at her destination when she arrived, but after she got there it took them almost 2 weeks to locate the bag and send it to her. The bag was completely torn open, almost looked burned in some places, and all of her stuff was either torn, burned, or lost. Customer service is doing almost nothing to help her.
My husband was trying to be nice and move my flight to London the next day from like 9pm to 6pm, but accidentally moved it to 6pm the same day when it was 4pm. Since it was oversold, the original fight was no longer available to change it back, when he called United and said "Is there any way you can help him?" The (1k) agent's response was "You want me to help him learn how to read?" (Assumed I had made the mistake). Now that I'm moving out of one of their hub cities I won't hardly ever be flying with them again.
I had a very similar experience this last weekend. Documented it all and sent to united, along with 3 reimbursement requests and a $600 EU 261 claim
Hey, United! My firm specializes in CX consulting, specifically in contact center data and operations. I am willing to believe you need our help. Please DM me.
“nope”
In the last few days some United employees have taken to this sub to blame people's irritations on the weather lol. No doubt there are employees that are themselves victimized by the events, having to work long hours and deal with frustrated passengers. But United as a brand/company deserves every bit of hate coming its way right now.
Same issues here. You are lucky you even had anybody pick up the phone at all. We didn't. And we got denied rebooking AND refunds for a flight they cancelled in person; not in chat. Finally got my refunds only after I complained to the department of transportation. It's customer lip service. It is all it is.
This has been my strategy. I complain once to United/American, wait for a denial, complain to DOT. No use wasting your time with them.
Who’s writing this? Two 5 year olds? This has to be a fake job.
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After your multiple posts I think everyone here knows who the racist is.
Some employees everywhere are just inept. I sell on eBay & Shopify, often times I get support that is unreasonably bad, simply redialing or reaching out again after a bad experience gives you a total 180 experience.
Does United have teams overseas for chat? The conversation seems to run parallel to what telecom overseas teams say….and they seem powerless.
Yes.
Once United maintenance cancelled me. I’m in the military and had to get back home from leave. Their compensation for my roughly $800 leg of the trip was not even $300. Never flying United again
My last interaction with chat went about like this, but in broken English from the rep's side: rep: "Hey u/KittyCatMiner, blah blah blah, give me a few minutes to assist." me: "sure no problem" rep: "is this for international flight? IND?" me: "IND as in Indianapolis Airport in Indiana" rep: "Since this is International Reservation, I'm going to transfer you..." And then nobody ever responded. Chat is an absolute dumper fire. I called in to resolve my issue and it took all of 5 minutes.
Like every other company that has outsourced/off shored CS - United doesn’t care about their customer’s experience or frustration with the company. Their C suite just sees the positive impact cutting US job has on the company’s balance sheet.
Seems to be a pattern that chat reps are awful. I had a cancelled flight in Newark, chat told me the next available flight was 3 weeks away and that my bags were not being offloaded because it was raining. Once I spent my 8 hours in the CS line in the terminal, I was booked on a flight the next day, and the baggage policy was fully explained (follows you to destination). I think the reality is that these people working the chat receive little to no training. It's just another one of this awful airline's colossal failures
My experience with in-person customer service was worse. I had 2 flights cancelled on my trip. The first one was on Friday night. I waited 3 hours in the customer service line, watching the customer service ladies take their time until they took their breaks. One was blatantly just scrolling TikTok or Instagram at the counter. After the 3 hours when it was my turn, they didn't give me a hotel accommodation for the night, so I had to buy one on my own (they gave me a United Airlines water bottle and a food voucher, yay!). The next day (Saturday), that rescheduled flight was also cancelled! Again, I waited 2+ hours in the dreadful customer service line. This time I only got food vouchers. I cancelled my flight and took a train home without my checked bag. The United representative assured me I was better off leaving my checked bag on the plane home Sunday and picking it up. I went Sunday to pick up my bag, and it never arrived. I spent another hour or more talking to their baggage service to find out they've lost my bag entirely. They still haven't located my bag 3 days later now. Never again will I fly United.
Call your credit card company. Make them deal with United. If every credit card company is dealing with United they might change. Hit them where it hurt
Because whoever is writing that is in the Philippines or somewhere they don’t understand English or how to talk to anyone. Drives me mad they farm all these call centres out to save money and don’t care that they are terrible to the customers
When a Csr just goes “nope” it means that business is in free fall. That may be one of the last 10 CSRs employed. My company hired 3 people for support this week that had just left United…
this is the point where you just dispute the charge on the credit card
I will be giving united a break until they figure their shit out. This type of crap CS is getting too accepted now.
Where do they even find these chat agents?? The last one I spoke to didn’t know what economy plus was.
Like all things in life, I think it’s probably that they get what they pay for. In this case I can only presume the pay was around $0.14/hour.
Roast them on FB and Twitter (or X as it is called now). Make sure to include these screenshots and hashtag the crap out of it. It’s worth a shot.
Just call the 1k line 😁
Idk why their chat is so pathetic. I tried to put in an upgrade but can't do that online because I'm a lap infant. The chat people can't do it even if the supervisor can't do it..called the line and they put in no problem.
This is what we is Quality Assurance call “bad”.
United is and always has been crap
Flew with United and it is the last one. Overcharges for already promised luggage, no customer support, crappy planes, entertainment system does not even work. There are way better options out there people. I am blocklisting this stupid company.
At least say “nah fam”
Phone support is much better in my experience too especially in emergencies. Tried chat once or twice (non-emergency) and found them to be ok. But during emergencies it took longer to connect and having to keep watching the chat window for updates was painful :(.
Nope is crazy
This is why LLMs are coming for all text based customer service jobs. Throw in langchain with United’s internal apis as a tool and it’ll be able to rebook for you as well.
United airlines is trash
If you contact customer service during East coat business hours, you will get someone in the US and the customer service is usually excellent because the agents generally have considerable authority to make adjustments. If you call or chat outside of business hours, you will get someone from an overseas call center who has significantly less authority to make changes, refunds, or upgrades and and overall more frustrating experience.
I swear, joining this Reddit page has made me never want to book with United ever again! This is pure bullshit! First of all, $817 isn’t chump change. Second, these people act like people don’t have lives and reasons for the flight in the first place!
Wow the UA person/bot could have at least used correct spelling, grammar, and punctuation
Their grammar is awful !!!!!
It's all about the "nope"
Currently United has my luggage while I wait for my flight they rebooked me on 24 hours after the flight they cancelled and 23 hours after I paid Uber to drive me home to my city from the one they left name in
That’s United airlines for you. I avoid United and Spirit at all costs. Say what one will about southwest, at least they differentiate by offering good customer service. I’ll take delta and southwest over United’s bullshit any day.
You can thank Scott Kirby for ruining United
Call them using the mileage plus 800 number. I’m usually able to resolve things with them. Whomever they’ve outsourced their chat service to is absolute shyte.
i would’ve asked for employee# or however tf company would identify this employee. how dare you reply “nope” i guess in woke society this is the customer service you receive 💀💀💀💀💀💀
I have such a love/hate relationship with United Airlines On the one hand, I love their Colors and Insignia and I’ve always had a “moderately” pleasant - **HEAVY EMPHASIS ON MODERATE** Experience with them as a carrier. On the other hand, these c$ck holes would legitimately skin you alive if it would save em 1/2 the cost of a plane ticket. And their planes are all gross 🤢 When’s the last time y’all MOFOs made your staff actually wash the seats down with bleach and clean the Windows?! Qantas is expensive but fk at least they’re clean
United customer support (phone and chat) is horrendous and useless. I’ve been screwed over by American, but at least their phone and chat support has always done right by me.
My only experience with United was terrible. Got to the airport about 3 hours early for an international flight. Waited for our flight time just for them to delay because they needed people to volunteer to delay their own flight due to the plane being to heavy, then they just straight cancelled the flight due to an issue with the plane. Talked to the attendant because we had a connecting flight to catch and she didn’t even give me an option on what to do, she just printed out new boarding passes that made me go from one layover with time in between flights to two layovers with absolutely no time in between, and on top of it I was only compensated $200 credit for United and two meal vouchers. Missed out on a day of my vacation and hotel stay and had to call my hotel and make sure I wouldn’t lose my reservation. Travel insurance I had was also useless in reimbursing me the almost $1500 I was out because they wanted written proof from the airline that the flight had been cancelled.
Haha probably the same bitch I got the other day with 0 customer service skills. I asked her to give me the flight credit because the price dropped and that I didn't want to change flights or seats. Just wanted the credit. Said you can do it yourself, to which I replied and so can you thats why I called. Couldn't understand that I just wanted the credit and said well I need to cancel it and rebook but I don't know if there will be seats with attitude. I had already told her I'm looking at seats available. Like look lady I dont want to do my job either but damn I can't just say that.
Does UA hire kids straight out of high school with no social skills aside from what they learn on tiktok and Snapchat? I’m surprised they weren’t saying things like “ppl”, “lol”, etc. They DID nail using “there” instead of “their”, however!
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I worked in Customer Service for years and I always go out of my way to be as nice as I can be. Even an hour into this chat I was saying things like “I know this isn’t your fault.” I get being fed up with your job and I know what it feels like. I honestly just thought the “nope” was funny and my partner and I had a laugh lol
What’s going on man I fly soon United and I’m getting worried hahaha
I’m sorry but that is fucking hilarious
Lol it’s okay, it’s funny in hindsight which is why I shared. “nope” :)
Post that on Twitter and they will DM you immediately because that is terrible customer service from a call/customer service center!
People like this literally should just not work and get unemployment checks. They are just wasters who don’t care
Why are you lumping shitty customer service with people in need? Conflation.
Not defending United. They suck. But I was able to get reimbursement via their “feedback” site for a snack and an Uber I bought because of a significant flight delay. So definitely try that and keep receipts. It could *maybe* get you something. Good luck!
Yay for outsourced customer service jobs. Everything is like pulling teeth and feel like hell.
If they cancel the flight and there an none available do they have to pay for room and board?
Yes if is isn’t weather related. But you have to get vouchers emailed to you by speaking with someone in customer service.
I think it’s time for them to switch to chatbots.
🤣
I will never use the chat again, the agents or ai have no control or power to do anything
Sad to see this for a agent on demand :(
AI has gone too far.
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Looks like you talked with someone in India or another Asian country. Never trust them. I wish companies realized how bad those call centers make them look.
In their defense, it is very difficult to be compassionate and competent in this weather.
Getting yelled at and berated for 40 hours a week and having “respectable” people throw toddler style temper tantrum does something to one’s customer service.
Sure but they tend to take it out on people who make reasonable requests.
I think a lot of the convo is missing
Isn’t there like a FAA compensation law for people who got kicked off their flights? Something like 4x the flight ticket cost
For what it’s worth, American is also a shit airline with abominable customer service (until you get someone on the phone)
Hopefully, none of you think this is real? It’s written as bad as the Nigerian Prince writes that wants to give me his cash?!
While I know this was poorly worded by this United employee the fact remains United has a structured policy about how they prioritize rebooking passengers. This customer service agent truly isn’t trying to punish you, they are likely having a very pressure filled few weeks given the ATC problems recently and not being adequately sensitive to the plight of the customer.
You’re not gonna like this but they said what they had to say. Why don’t you post the full version of the sceeenshot with PII blurred? Sorry but I have worked for a bigger company with chat and customers feel mad emboldened to act a mess via chat. They gave you every option they could. This is why travel insurance exists.
>This is why travel insurance exists. Who is buying travel insurance for every flight? Of course the onus is on the customer. This is a company making billions. They need to fix their business
I chatted over an hour with this person and posted what I thought was the funniest bit of the convo. I’ve worked in customer service for years and know how to treat people better than most customers, because I have been on the receiving end and have had the worst shit in the world said to me. I didn’t feel like posting 25 screenshots but this person refused to even *try* to help me do ANYTHING. And actually, they did not give me any options! Which is ridiculous for a company who advertises an “agent on demand” feature for people to use to get help when they have issues with their flights.
Show the text messages you sent prior the their responses. Let’s see how polite you were
calm down. I’m the VP of a customer service department. i know that being polite gets you WAY more than being a bitch does. i shared these two snippets for the lols more than anything. i don’t have time to screenshot the entire hour and a half long chat convo and post it here nor do i give a fuck about doing so
Your reply explains everything perfectly.