Why
August 25, 2006 by Tom
3 Comments
Our final day of vacation was a day we seriously had nothing planned, which turned out to be good. We went into Portland and walked along the river past a bunch of parks and had some lunch at a floating restaurant on the water. Everything was fine up until this point when I got an email (see, the Q is handy after all!) from Orbitz saying our flight home was delayed by 2 hours already. It was 12:00pm at this point and our flight is at 3:30! Something really bad must have happened.
We originally had a flight from Portland to San Francisco with a one hour layover, and then a flight from SFO back to O’Hare. Well, our first flight being delayed by two hours is going to cause us to miss the connection so Beth calls United Airlines and tries to get us switched. After repeating the flight numbers and airport names about 3 times to the moron on the other end she hung up because it was going nowhere. Luckily I called and got a competent employee. He informed me that we had been automatically placed on an alternate flight direct to Chicago leaving at 3:25. Perfect! So we figured this was going to work out better so we go back to the hotel and catch the MAX train out to the airport (cost $3 for both of us). It’s about 2:00 at this time so we are actually early and the airport looks totally dead as we walk past every single check-in counter, until we get to the United’s which is spilling out of the ribbon lines and is wrapped around the counter. What the fuck!
We get at the end of the line and then I notice they have the easy check-in stations so I go and try to use it with no luck because it tells me “Your flight information has changed and you cannot use easy check-in”. Damn, that sucks, but ok. We stay in line. It’s a long line, but at least it’s moving. After about 30 minutes we’re halfway through it, but then, with about 100 customers in line, 3 of the United employees working the counter get up and leave! This leaves 1 person to deal with the entire line and 3 people helping the easy check-in customers. Oh, and the 1 person left was responsible for business and first-class customers so whenever one of them showed up, they got helped before the next person in our line.
Apparently it wasn’t obvious to the United employees that no one was using easy check-in because they changed everyone’s flight so our line just crawled along while they sat behind the counter smiling and waiting for someone to help. Beth went and checked the flight monitors and noticed our flight had now been delayed until 4:45 which was good for us considering the line we were in and how it was moving. After another 40 minutes in line it’s about 4:15 we’re nearing the front and we notice some completely idiotic United employee in the back of the line has been redirecting people to the easy check-in attendants. But she started in the back. Does that make sense to anyone?!
So now, after an hour in line, these smiling people can all of a sudden help us? That’s great, but how about you service the people who waited the longest amount of time, not the least. Someone mentions this the idiot attendant and she replies with “These attendants (pointing at single employee helping first, business and coach class) are helping you” to which the entire line goes “Now they’re not!”. She looks amazed like she had no idea and then tells the smiling folks to help our line too. At 4:30 we’re the 2nd group in line and our flight is delayed until 5:15 now. Good! We might make it. But then they announce that anyone on “Flight blahblahblah to LAX needs to step forward” so about 10 people jump line in front of us. We inquire why they are being helped first and it’s “so their flight is not delayed.” Every flight was delayed today! Does it really make a difference at this point?
We finally get our turn at 5:00 and go the counter. We mention our flight is leaving soon and we need to be quick and the employee tells us “Uh no, that flight left 20 minutes ago. Those monitors are always wrong.” Then what’s the point of the effing monitors?! He also informed us that at times like these you need to “hop up and down and yell you’re going to miss your flight”. A real professional. What a great airline. He apologizes and gets us on a flight to Denver where we have a connection to O’Hare. He had mentioned he would also “do something for us” for our inconvenience. As we’re walking away I remember this and ask him about it since it so easily slipped his mind already and he prints us off $50 vouchers for our next United flight. I can’t tell you when that will be if ever! We paid $400 for each of those tickets. We’ve flown Southwest Airlines for $100 with much better service.
Well, our flight to Denver was then delayed and our connection was also delayed so we ended up in O’Hare at about 1:30am. It was only an hour later than our original flights would have gotten us, what what an effing disaster. I can’t say if I’ll ever use this airline again after the way they handled this mess. We had a great time on the trip, but it was a really sour end to the vacation.
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You might be interested in this site:
http://www.untied.com , it is a dedicated website to United.
The travel industry needs a big change. Big travel agencies like EXPEDIA and Orbitz have a lot of complaints. EXPEDIA is listed in the top ripoff link at the bad business bureau ( http://www.ripoffreport.com ) and has two “dedicated” websites due to poor customer support and lies: http://www.victimsofexpedia.com and http://www.shameonexpedia.com
Orbitz has: http://www.shameonorbitz.com
Kind regards
tom im less concerned with the flight being delayed and more concerned with why your plane couldnt have had something go wrong that would cause your plane to crash, ultimately leading to your death. Beth can live though
at least you didn’t have to carry all your belongings in a plastic bag… and tom, i read the whole article/story, but maybe i read it all bc im a good friend.. :)