Last week when returning from a trip to Europe, I had an experience that was relatively new to me but perhaps not to others. As you can probably deduce from the title of this post it has something to do with United.
Let me give you a bit of context as to what happened…..
As I mentioned, last week I was returning from Europe aboard Lufthansa’s LH432 to Chicago. The trip started quite nicely after being upgraded at the gate in Frankfurt from Premium Economy to Business and the flight was as always, too short.
With LH432, I had about an hour to make my connection to a United flight to home in GRR. We landed on time, my bag was the third one off the belt and things couldn’t have gone more smoothly.
Even to the point that though PreCheck was closed at this time of day in ORD’s Terminal 2, when the TSA agent heard by Boarding Pass give off the 3-beep alarm, he let me proceed as though the PreCheck lane was open. Great! Finally a nice TSA experience. At this point my flight should have started boarding and I had 30 minutes to make a 5-10 minute walk. Perfect.
So, as I approach gate F17 in ORD, it was United’s turn to help me through the process and get me home to my Wife and Jack Russells; and thats where we enter the Bizarro World……
As I came to the gate, I noticed that the door was open and boarding was supposedly to have had started 10-15 minutes ago. Not being sure if boarding had started or not, I come to the podium and asked one of the gate agents quite simply: ‘Have you started boarding for Grand Rapids yet?’
‘Check your DAMN Boarding Pass for the boarding time’
Yep, that was the reply…..’Check your DAMN Boarding Pass for the boarding time’, to which I countered that according to the BP, boarding should have started so thats why I asked.
‘Your Boarding Pass will tell you when you will board’
Bravo, madam gate agent….bravo.
It took quite a bit of self control to not drop the expletives trying to force themselves from my mouth, I simply shook my head and walked away. I figured at this point if I escalated the interaction, she was just ‘bitch’ enough to find a reason to not let me board. Fine.
Ultimately boarding did start, albeit 20 minutes after my Boarding Pass told me it would and I did extract some minor bit of revenge when she called Boarding Group 1 and the look on her face when I approached, was somewhat more valuable than a Greek Drachma.
And of course, United couldn’t figure out in an hour how to get my bag on my flight to GRR, but I’ll let that one go…. 🙂
After all, Jeff is far busier marching in parades with rainbow flags than he is ensuring that his managers are putting together the best staff possible at his most important hub.
So, anyone else come across these Bizarro gate agents in your travels?
PS…
For those that care, I did send a note sharing the experience to the 1kvoice@United.com email address…..The canned scripted reply was exactly what I expected:
Thank you LH Flyer for being a valuable customer…blah blah blah..
We’re sorry you had a bad experience….blah blah blah.
We work hard every day to make sure passengers like you have great experiences with us….blah blah blah.
We hope to see you on a future United flight…. blah blah blah.
………I wish I can believe even the fake sincerity…. 🙂
Lest we all forget that Continental Airlines started out as People’s Express….!
What I would like to know is exactly how many people work in the UAL Customer Service Department? Being a reader of many travel blogs it is easy to recognize their form letter response. Sometimes they even forget to delete “Customer name here” and insert the person’s name. I never hear of United making ANY attempt to make things right and I’m not talking awarding free miles for your displeasure. Here is an idea-how about making sure it does not happen to another customer.
Every time I fly, there are like 10 people going up to the podium asking when we’re boarding, if it’s the right flight etc. It’s like kids asking “are we there yet” in the car. Just look at your ‘damn’ boarding pass indeed! Or even better, look at the monitors near the gate which will be decently updated. Please don’t use up the gate agents’ time unless you actually have an issue.
It’s not good when agents are rude of course, but I can really understand it in this case.
1. No monitors 2. Gate area quite empty (flight had light load). 3. I had an issue. Boarding was supposed to have started, gate is open and there was no line. I certainly do not think I was inconveniencing the agent with a valid question. Besides, I dont think her response should have been tendered under any circumstance. Customer service 101.
This is normal for United employees in general. I consider it Bizzaro world if it were anything but rude, nasty, and unprofessional.
I once had an ORD gate agent have me go back in the group 3 queue because I came on the side and tried to board first (with a group 1 boarding pass). She said “oh you cannot break the queue like this”. No real response from 1kvoice when I emailed them about this.
I am a 1K who tries to avoid UA out of passion. And I travel out of my own pocket – not on corporate expense. Every year, UA falls to new depths.
Welcome to AirSmisuk where the head of customer service is a lawyer. I have encountered similar GA attitudes of late with them. They must have a new incentive program to be mean and rude.
I would have responded with “I did, and it’s telling me that I should be boarding, so let me ask again: have you started boarding the flight yet?”
There’s never a need for rudeness for someone in customer-facing position. Grr.
If you were there you would have seen it was wiser to walk away than to incite her. With my luck I would have not been allowed to board and being it was the last flight of the day to GRR, I did not want to spend the night in ORD when I could avoid it.
LHFlyer,
It is a shame that you were treated poorly by an employee of UAL. Hopefully the person on the other end of the 1kvoice@united.com will put more effort into addressing your problem and to the customer’s satisfaction.
Gene and Greg,
As, the the rainbow comment as referred to by Gene, the meaning of the author and agreement by many is that United Airlines is more interested in playing (public relations) that they tolerate “a choice” rather than train their gate crew to treat all people of any race, color, or gender as a customer with a question about boarding a plane.
And, the “B” word was used as that was the attitude that was presented to LHFlyer.
There is a newer term in business called “Extreme Customer Service”. This means that what was once expected customer service of a gracious smile, pleasant words, and attention to detail. They had to reinvent the ordinary customer service and call it “Extreme Customer Service” with a notion of going above and beyond to keep and attract more customers compared to competitors in a business industry.
It is a shame that we have lost many basic customer service skills in this industry and most customer focused companies, that this society puts up with “here is your ticket and be grateful” mentality.
The customer focus of providing a service or product has gone the way of the past and it is more about an appearance of toleration of one minority for their possible future business as well as extracting more dollars for past common offerings of complimentary baggage check, complimentary meals, and complimentary blanket and pillow to name a few. This lack of complimentary is why so many people try to earn the miles with a certain airline carrier to obtain those luxury items now.
Everyone at UA is stressed… It’s been much worse lately though.
http://crankyflier.com/2015/06/29/is-a-labor-slowdown-the-reason-uniteds-operation-has-been-terrible/
Any reason for the ‘b’ word here?
Never understand why the United FlyerTalk forum has so many people who constantly bicker and complain about the airline, yet continue earning status with them.
Clearly there is some outsized value being offered in other ways.
Sounds like the “b” word was warranted.
United Flyertalk Forum? Isn’t this a blog not (to my knowledge) associated with Flyertalk? Also the blog is called LH Flyer – Not UA Flyer. I am not out to get UA – but a customer facing employee swearing at a customer is never appropriate, bad day or not.
B word? Bitch? Oh yes, her attitude and behavior fit the profile perfectly.
Shoulda got her name, tweet with all the right United hashtags, fb, etc etc. That seems to be the only thing these big corps understand. Bad publicity they care about. One email that nobody sees, meh.
Oh the temptation was there, but I felt putting her name out there would be stooping down to a level I didn’t want to go to.
That is pretty bad, although I (somewhat) recently had a United Club agent (they’re supposed to be the nice ones right?) accuse me of trying to “circumvent fare rules” because I had bought 2 one way tickets instead of a round trip. Accusing your customers of stealing and cussing at them? Yup. Welcome to the “new” friendly skies!
What’s with the rainbow comment? Makes you sound lie Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
Because there are far more important things for him to do than march in that parade.
Jeez. Chill out
Gene, just stating fact. Didn’t matter to me if he was waving a rainbow flag, the Union Jack or the Jolly Roger…..