I will never fly with the airlines as a result again.

Every time I have had the misfortune of dealing with them, something gets lost, stolen or my flights are nearly always delayed. Customer service is poor and the company’s attitude toward their operation is unprofessional.

I have filed my claim with the Better Business Bureau. They can take their air miles and free flights and put them straight up a very uncomfortable place as far as I am concerned.

Throughout the 80’s and early part of the 90’s, I was spending a lot of time on planes flying for work. While it was difficult spending time away from my three pre-school children and my wife, it was some consolation to know that at least I was racking up frequent flyer miles. United had built my loyalty with the promise that if I flew with them I would some day be able to treat my family to a nice vacation after years on the road.

I did my part. I flew almost exclusively on United Airlines. This was before the days of “expiring miles.” Later, my miles were broken out separately on my statement as “non-expiring” miles.

Now my kids are in their teens, and I wanted to take them on the trip I had EARNED by trusting United Airlines (i.e., that if I did my part by spending thousands of dollars with them they would provide the trips promised me). You must be able to imagine my surprise when I called to find out my balance. Instead of the 165,000+ miles, I was told that I only had 5,000 miles in my account. I was stunned and assumed that there must be a mistake. I was later to find that the mistake was in ever trusting United Airlines.

United made the decision that they would, in fact, expire the “non-expiring” miles. Since I hadn’t traveled over the past few years they would wipe away all of these miles. I do want to point out that American, Delta, and Alaska airlines had similar classifications of miles, i.e., those that expired and those that didn’t. I had much lower balances on these other airlines, since I had used United for most of my travels. This is important to bring up because (unlike United) American, Delta, and Alaska air kept my “non-expiring” miles intact.

I made frequent calls to both Mileage Plus and United. Each pointed the finger at each other. The response that I got was consistent. They needed me to fly with them over the past few years and since I didn’t they didn’t consider me to be a loyal customer. I pointed out that I wasn’t flying with anyone during that period. Apparently, they expected me to rush out and buy a ticket that I didn’t need just to keep their airline afloat.

United has made it very clear that they do not intent to live up to their promise of giving me ticket rewards for my loyalty in the 80’s and 90’s. I feel as though my bank account was wiped out by a criminal. The bank account was my mileage account, and you know who the criminals are.

Read the complaints of others, regarding United Airlines. Don’t let this happen to you. Make a conscious choice not to end up like me. I urge you to trust your flying dollars to airlines with integrity, such as American, Delta, and Alaskan Airlines.

You will undoubtedly see many complaints that United Mileage Plus members find it impossible to use their miles (i.e., planes don’t have seats available for rewards travel). I find it interesting that I had little trouble getting reward travel on American Airlines to and from Miami for a cruise that I have planned. United believes airline travel is a commodity. I disagree, and I appreciate the service provided by other customer-focused airlines.

As a result, I was not able to fly on my scheduled departure date.

I looked up seat availabilty online, and flights that would get me back to the Newark, NJ airport prior to Christmas Eve were showing available seats. When I attmpted to switch my flight, I was told by agents, supervisors and Customer Relations that those seats were ONLY available for purchase.

Since I have been stupid enough to be loyal to United, I had an additional 50,000 miles available and offered these miles in exchange for a seat on one of these flights. I was told by a United airlines Manager at LAX that this was not feasible, as the way the airline makes money is by selling seats, and the only seats they had available were for purchase at a fee of $1,000 or more. The soonest they could let me use the remaining portion of my frequent flyer ticket was on the red-eye Christmas Eve into Christmas day.

They could clearly see at the ticketing counter that I had just had surgery, as I still have a black eye, stitches and a plate in my mouth. What they offered was a “special fare medical emergency ticket.”

What’s even more insulting… they said that I could fly Orange County to Laguardia, if I paid a $100 change fee. ARE THEY SERIOUS??????

Did I mention that I spent a total of 10 hours yesterday and today trying to resolve this issue in person and on the phone?

Finally, I figured I would get the last laugh… I will fly stand-by. They have many seats available, and I will undoubtedly get one just by showing up. I won’t have to pay more and I won’t have to give them any more miles. Screw United.

I will be canceling my United credit card and telling my company travel agentcy that we will no longer be using United.

Oh… every United employee I spoke with thanked me for being a Premier customer, having flown nearly 200,000 miles with this airline alone.

What do I want as compensation? There is no compensation for the grief and suffering caused by their unfriendly policies.

Happy Holidays.

United: middle-of-the road service (some great crews, some surly), clean planes, on-time departures, lots of good information (including automatic rebooking if connection is missed — just look at my SMS and go to gate), free audio (*love* channel 9!), not-so-bad snack boxes, economy plus at no extra $ if you fly 25k mi/year (agree — everyone should have this option if available), decent first class (not fantastic, but not bad), including the ability to upgrade a low fare with a systemwide cert to Asia — very nice perk for the 1Ks — we get 6 per year. Overall, it’s not been as bad an experience for me over the past several years as it seems others have encoutered.

US Airways: same inconsistent in-flight service (some great crews — usually the old AWA — but some nasty ones), and the rest is worse… consistently dirty planes, laughably incompetent ground staff, sub-standard first class (plastic cups!), all departure/arrival times end with “-ish” as in “we’ll take off around 8-ish”, pay for headsets, lousy entertainment, terrible food, very cheap FF program (impossible to redeem or upgrade, even as platinum, despite “unlimited upgrade” propoganda, 120 segment threshold to Chairmans (this is prohibitive), no drink coupons, no extra “perks”)

I admit that no domestic carrier is giving service that I would consider good, but given that the public is demanding low price above all, at least United is making an attempt to keep it’s FFs happy. For all of the complaints above (and, I’m not arguing — I believe your complaints are totally legitimate — United needs to treat its non-FFs MUCH better to INCENT loyalty), I think United is doing a decent job keeping its FFs happy. Could be better, but it’s not as bad as it could be (and is, frankly, on US Airways).

Don’t ever fly United and if you do, I hope you’re flight doesn’t get cancelled because of “weather” because you will see that all they care about is $

I too can no longer stand this airline. My most recent experience that has placed this in the “I am taking my business elsewhere mode” I flew Denver to NY, NY to Dulles, Dulles to Heathrow in order to save some money on a ticket (United’s strategy, if we can maximize our load and get people to kill themselves in that process, sure we’ll let them save a couple of bucks…still around a $1000.00 bucks…. when I tried to come back one day early as a premier exec I was told without a Saturday night stay there would be two additional components…A $200 change fee AND a fare change of “something a little over $2000.00 however, we cannot tell you until we reissue… net net. I’ll stay in the UK one more day… have a little more time to think about it… away from my family… and then fly anyone else I possibly can whenever I can…. I only thank my lucky stars I’m one of their better customers…I’d hate to see a worse customer experience.

Read my full story at
http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com

http://evilunitedairlines.blogspot.com/