United Airlines

I have what might be a unique complaint.  I guess if the flight is on time the crew and those crew being shuttled to their next flight have the right to be rude to customers and are not subject to the rules of everyone else.  Here is my story, which I will preface with the fact that I fly frequently and have been Platinum on Continental and Gold on AA, so I have realistic expectations of things within and outside the airlines control, but this was a first. 

I had paid for the extra legroom of an exit row seat when my flight was booked and had a proper boarding pass etc.

When I got to my seat, there was a United employee who was flying to IAH for his next assignment in my seat.  In fact six of the twelve exit row seats were non-rev passengers. 

After ignoring my first three attempts to get his attention, he was using the strategic look away and pretend you don’t see him mode,  I finally got his attention and advised him I thought he was in my seat. 

He told me to find another seat as he was there first and he wasn’t moving.  (This is on a full aircraft)   When I asked to see if we were double booked in the same seat he refused to show me his ticket saying he didn’t have to. 

After contacting a flight attendant, the flight attendant, went to the gate agent and had the gate agent sort out the seating.  Once The on-duty FA went to the gate agent the crew member being shuttled left my seat and went into the back galley area.  I figured my rude guy was was probably a supervisor because no one wanted to get involved, and they removed another shuttling employee from exit row across the Aisle and made a seat for my rude guy.  Upon being reseated he commented “There are you happy now.” 

During the flight I noticed all the employes kept their electronics on, ignored the fasten seatbelt sign, passed their cellphones around with the active crew members showing pictures and so forth.

It was quite a party.  The remainder of the flight was incident free.  I am used to passengers being rude, stressed out etc or in some cases ignorant of the correct seating etc. but I have never been treated rudely by a uniformed employee active duty or not.

I guess the quality of Continental service we had grown accustomed to is gone.

I received an E certificate and I am trying to book a flight on line with my certificate and it does not work. Help!

We had to pay a change of ticket fee, $150.00 per person when missed a flight due to mix up about 12 .30 AM instead of PM. As I am from Europe this mistake is easy to make and they should have had a warning ‘red eye’. AND most of all, rebook without paying a fee. Now we paid a fee, waited 6 hrs. in airport and had to hop on 3 planes to get home.

Chris, thanks again for your service to the travel community. This page on contacts is great. Never thought I’d have to use it. But like a lot of people, am not getting the responses I need from United so I am engaging with these email addresses.
Interestingly, I just filled out a form for the Beverly Hilton for my last stay and almost immediately got an email from a service manager there wanting to know why I gave them a six on one of the rating scales. Now that’s service!

The experience with United Airline at Madison is nothing but appalling. We (me, my
wife and our 11-month daughter) checked in at Madison
airport 50 minutes ahead of departure time (6:26 AM, 4/22/2012, UA5848 from Madison to Chicago).
We spent a long time waiting in line to go through security, when we arrived at
the gate, it was 6:13 AM, 13 minutes before airplane take-off. The worker at
the gate would not allow us to board, saying he has closed the door of
airplane.

What really appalled us was, this UA worker at Madison airport (tall, pale,
over-weighted, middle-aged, white male, first name started with “D”) was the
same person who checked our luggage in at the UA counter before security check
point. He knew we are a family with a baby, he knew we were making an
international flight connecting through Chicago
to China,
and he knew that we were checked in when he closed the airplane door. During
the whole course of our waiting for going through security, we heard no
reminder from airport broadcasting. This worker refused to explain to us why he
did not wait for us even he evidently knew we already checked in and he knew
our situation; this worker refused to explain to us why he did not call us
through airport broadcasting even he was aware of the situation had the full
capability to do so. His attitude stroke us as inconsiderate, indifferent, and
cold-blooded. This experience gives us a strong impression that United Airline
is a very inhuman cooperation that has no care about customer experience.
United Airline is definitely the WORST airline I have used. Avoid United
Airline whenever possible!
 

I could not agree more!

My husband works in Afghanistan and I have not seen him for almost 2 months. So we decided to meet in Dubai. Bought the ticket and the day was here for me to finally leave, boy was I in for a surprise. I go to Houston Intercontiental Airport around 2 my flight was leaving around 5:20 in the afternoon. This flight was leaving Houston and connecting in WAshinton to Dubai. First I get out of my car and the United guy on the curb wants to check my bags and he then tells me that there is a fee for my bags. Hold on I have a mileage plus membership so I should get one free bag. The guy then replies I don’t know about that we will have to go in to check at the counter. We go in and sure enough I was right. I get my boarding pass and proceed to check the boards to make sure my flight is on time. Well sure enough my plane is running an hour behind due to weather in Denver. So I immedately go to customer service and they send to a plane that I may or may not be able to catch in a completely different terminal. Needless to say I missed it. Then I go back to the customer service desk and tell them I need to get to my flight in Washington because I have a connecting flight. They tell me that there is nothing they can do except get me to Washington put me in a hotel and then send me on my way to Dubai the next day. I explain to them that my husband is waiting for me and I have hotel reservations I have to get to that plane. So they research some more and they put on an Emmirates direct flight (which was the best part of this whole ordeal). I ask the lady about my luggage and she says not to worry that my luggage will follow. I ask three times and even gave description of my luggage so that they could find it. I board my plane happy as can be finally on my way. I get to the airport in Dubai go to luggage carasel and waited and waited. No luggage. So then I proceed to the Emmirates baggage desk and explain to them. They have me fill out a form regarding my luggage and say they will call me as soon as they find something out. I meet my husband he suggest that we wait for my orginal flight to arrive and maybe my luggage is on there. Waited no luggage. We proceed to hotel. By this time I have been in the same clothes for about 24 hours. We get to the hotel and figure in the morning my luggage will be here no problems. Its Monday morning and I wake up and the lady from Emmirates calls me and tells me that my luggage won’t be here until Tuesday morning. I can’t go anywhere because my clothes is all dirty I am stuck in my room all day Monday. So one whole day of my vacation is ruined. Tuesday comes and I get a phone call at nine in the morning my luggage is downstairs. They bring it up and I am so excited I can finally leave the room and see Dubai. I through on some clean clothes and out we go. I get back to the hotel that night and start looking through my luggage and things are missing. 1 watch, 1 bracelet matching earrings and matching ring, 1 pair of red earrings, 1 pair of emarld earrings, 2 bottles of perfume, 1 bottle of red nail polish. I was so upset and disgusted I can’t believe someone could go through my luggage and steal all of this without someone seeing it. So I think that maybe I left it at home. So Wednesday we get up go out and eat lunch and then go back to the hotel to repack because we have to be at the airport for 8:30 to start checking in for our 12:10 am flight back to the states. My husband checks in and then I check in and what more could go wrong. They don’t have me listed as a passenger I am like are you getting me I have a ticket. So they take my passport and they start talking among themselves. They look at me look at my passport look at me. By this time I am like what the hell. Then I remember I have my confirmation in my bag. I get it out and bam they tell me I guess we will have to add you to the list, I GUESS SO! The flight was horrible the flight attendants were not very nice, they did what they had to and nothing beyond that. We get to Dulles and we hurry through customes throught passport and through check points because we only have 1 hour and 46 minutes to get to our flight. We are running only to find out there is a delay. You think that they could have annouced over the intercom that this flight was being delayed for those of us who were running to get to it. So the walkway that goes from the terminal to the plane is broke. So we have to mover terminals and they have to move the plane which takes about an hour. Finally boarded the plane and on my way back to Houston where it all started. United is telling me they are not to blame in all of this because Emmirates was the last one with my bag. I don’t understand none of these problems with my baggage would have happened if they would have transferred my bag like they promised they would.

I returned home from Las Vegas on United Airlines this week only to find a prized drum stick I caught at a concert of my favorite band had been stolen from my bag, most probably during my 3 hour layover at O’Hare airport in Chicago.  This truly disgusts me.  I am searched and x-rayed only to have the very people in charge of our security steal from me with literally no recourse for me.  I am so upset over this.  I will file a claim with United, but will most probably be told I’m just out of luck.. so disheartening..

My family and I are demanding a full refund of our airline tickets because United Airlines ruined our vacation. We only have such an opportunity once in a very long time and due to no fault of our own, the entire trip to Mexico was a mess. The problems started as soon as we arrived to check in for our flights in Helena, MT an hour and a half prior to our departure. The automated check-in machine was not working properly, so the United Airlines representative asked us to approach the desk so he could manually check our tickets. We booked online through Expedia.com and had our printed itineraries from United.com. The man was incompetent and unable to operate the computer. He accomplished nothing in 15 minutes of clicking and staring at the screen. Then the man called over another woman, whose name we remember to be Dora, for assistance. When Dora began checking us in, she noticed that my wife, Olga, has a Ukrainian passport in her maiden name and a permanent resident card with her married name. She also had other forms of picture identification with her. Dora was completely confused as to how a person can travel with a passport and green card with different names on them. She was on the phone and computer for half an hour before she figured out it was normal and everything was fine. 

We were traveling with our eleven month old daughter, Sofia, to Cancun, Mexico. We were clear that she was coming and that she would be riding on our lap. There was no charge for her ticket. Then my wife called United Airlines a week before the flight to make sure that Sofia was booked to go with us on the itinerary and if we needed to do anything besides have her passport ready. The United representative said that we were all set and nothing else needed to be done. We printed out the itinerary and it said in clear, bold type at the top of the first page;

“Note: All infants traveling internationally are required to have a ticket. Some itineraries can be eTicketed. If your itinerary is not eTicketable, the infant’s paper ticket will be mailed to your billing address before your travel date. There is no additional charge for this ticket. Other passengers will be issued eTickets.”

We bought our tickets two months in advance, and no paper tickets were ever mailed to us, telling us that our itinerary was eTicketable. Dora, at the United airlines desk, refused to allow us on the plane without a printed ticket for Sofia. She insisted that we pay $150 for her to print our daughter a ticket even though we had the printed confirmation that there would be no additional charge for her ticked. We agreed to pay because The plane was already boarding and we hadn’t even checked our bags. No other passengers were in line before us and no one was in line at security. The United representative in Helena forced us to miss our flight and would not allow the baggage person to take our bags when she asked for them even though it was clear we could have boarded in time. Instead, she told us we had 3 choices. First, to cancel our vacation that was already paid for with flights and and an all-inclusive hotel. Second, to return the following day and catch another flight at the same time, costing us a night and a day of our vacation. That would mean sacrificing about $1400 resort charges we already paid for. The third choice was to drive 2 hours to Bozeman airport to try to catch another flight leaving at 10:00 am. This option would get us to our hotel at around 1:00 am. We originally booked the flights TWO MONTHS IN ADVANCE just so we could find the shortest possible flight duration for the welfare of our baby. Our original trip would have been 7 hours long, putting us at our destination at 3:00 pm the same day. Instead, because of the incompetence of the United representatives in Helena, we were forced to accept a 18 hour trip with way more hassle and stress that originated 2 hours driving from our home town. Sofia’s was so exhausted that by the end of the trip she was vomiting and screaming with frustration. When we arrived in Cancun at such a late hour, we had to purchase a shuttle to the resort that would have been provided free if we hadn’t missed our first plane. There were no restaurants or stores open where we could get food because no food or snacks were provided on our flights. The worst part of it all was that our checked luggage did not make it to Cancun. It consisted of all of our clothes, baby food, diapers, sunscreen, swimsuits, toiletries, etc. We left a cold climate and arrived in a very hot, humid climate. We had no comfortable or clean clothes to change our baby or ourselves into for the entire next day. We couldn’t even use the beautiful pools outside our room that we paid dearly for. We only had a six day vacation and 2 of those days were completely ruined. We had reserved excursions for the next day that had to be cancelled and we lost our deposit. After receiving our luggage the following evening, we were stressed out and aggravated so much that it was impossible to relax and enjoy our surroundings. We fly internationally a couple of times each year and we have never had such a negative experience. We had to change our whole vacation plan on the spot and miss out on many of our planned activities. 

The trip back was even worse. With the layovers and all the additional costs involved with having to buy expensive food on the way home, we got back to Bozeman nearly broke and completely wiped out with exhaustion at midnight. We had to pay for a week’s worth of parking fees and get a hotel in Bozeman. And guess what else happened… United had somehow lost another piece of our luggage on the return trip. It happened to be $1000.00 of fishing gear (that I never got the chance to use because of United Airlines). I filed a missing luggage report immediately upon arrival but the airline couldn’t even find where the luggage could have been. No tracking information was ever given to me online and it took 3 days and the threat of filing a police report to get it back. 

We had a bad feeling before getting on the plane to Cancun in Bozeman that United was going to deny us a refund for our flight debacle so my wife called United during our 2 hour drive to Bozeman. The nice representative on the phone whose name was either Erin or Karen, told her that we were eligible for a refund. She said that we should first complete the flights and then call and file a complaint as soon as we arrived home. That’s exactly what we did. The United Airlines phone support is pitifully slow and aggravating. After multiple calls, hours of waiting and wasting time trying to speak to a live person, we were transferred by the ‘refunds’ department to other non-related departments over and over. We have suffered enormous amounts of stress, aggravation and loss of time and money due to United Airlines. We demand a full refund for all our tickets and the additional charge for the infant ticket. We also demand to be refunded for the additional expenses we had due to 4 hours of driving, fuel, parking, dining, hotel and necessities like diapers, sunscreen and personal items we were forced to buy. These expenses came to $1000 that we were not prepared to spend. We also expect that the combined 4 and a half days of missing luggage will be made up to us somehow by the airline. 

That comes to $2,250 in tickets, $1000 in expenses,  and credit for the missing luggage. We demand to be refunded and will not let this issue rest. We are prepared take further legal actions if need be because our vacation is worth much more than money. Please do the right thing and give us back our money immediately. 

Am in Geneva Switzerland, booked a flight weeks ago to the states, want to bring my cat was told upfront that United has an excellent program for pets and there would be no problem.  Problem, first No one seems to know what the exact rules are as I have received a variety of info on the phone by different people as to what was required and guess what, I leave in a week and am Just told, after 2 weeks of many trips to the airport and hours on the phone, that I am not allowed to bring an animal on this flight. have been given every excuse in the book…the computers have not been installed as promised so the info is not available, to simply giving me another bogus phone number to call.  I have wasted an enormous amount of time and have Nothing to show for.