Heartbreak & Now Indignation Over Hong Kong
Well, I’ve finally seen some action taken on my 4 mile United Award Tickets. But it wasn’t the communication United promised. It wasn’t communication at all! They posted Monday night on Flyertalk and Milepoint that they were not honoring the tickets and would be in touch with the customers who had booked to give them the option of cancelling with no penalty or paying the full miles.
I’ve received no emails or messages from them yet about my intineraries, but when I logged into my account tonight, they were gone. I clicked on the cancelled tab, and sure enough. There they were. !? Not only was I not contacted beforehand about whether I wanted to pay the full miles, they didn’t even contact me to let me know my trips had been cancelled!!
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think United is obligated to honor these mistakes fares and I don’t think the DOT should be involved at all. And as badly as I want to go in First Class for 4 miles, I’m not sure I want to spend the rest of the year, and have every other United customer as well,  potentially paying higher United airfare to make up for their losses if this has to be honored.
HOWEVER. I am a United 1k. I have many paid reservations with United in the coming months. They said they would be in contact with me. I don’t expect them to honor it, I do expect some courtesy. And failing to meet their own committments regarding communication is not acceptable and disappointing. I’m not happy. Almost unhappy enough for me to want the DOT to give them hell.
UPDATE: Jeanne just informed me that United posted a new message on Milepoint saying they were going to be cancelling tickets and were “in the process of communicating with affected customers” and that they cancelled tickets outright for folks who didn’t have enough miles in their account to cover the full miles. I have big problems with that.
1. Anything other than direct communication with affected customers is not an appropriate way to inform them of changes to their itineraries. I don’t check Milepoint daily, although apparently I should, since United is routing all important communication through them instead of my inbox.
2. Doesn’t United sell miles? They assumed that because I lacked the total number of miles needed to redeem my itineraries (and here I have to wonder if I’d had enough miles to cover one, would they still have cancelled both in an “all or nothing” play), that I wouldn’t want to cancel one of the other award trips I have on hold to come up with the miles nor that I would have wanted to purchase miles outright from them. Both seem like huge assumptions to be making on my behalf…
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United has been very tight lipped about the number of award trips booked. Was it hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands… more? Just what order of magnitude are we talking about anyway?
Judging by the way they’re handling this, they may have determined that it is impossible to personally contact each and every person affected. Pretty gutsy (and maybe stupid) too, considering that the DOT has not issued any formal ruling on the matter. They could regret cancelling any bookings “for non-payment” when they did issue receipts indicating that the tickets were paid for, even if it was for just four miles and some taxes. I have read somewhere that the penalty or fine for cancelling a ticket could be $25K per instance.
I did not participate, so I’m just an observer in all of this. It is interesting to watch unfold. I wonder if they will ever have to release details of the extent they were harmed by their own programming error and, apparently, lack of any decent IT QA/Test or Change Management procedures.
The board of directors and major shareholders are probably really questioning the competence of the management team right about now, considering the financial risk taken in this one (likely minor) code change.
And I keep reading people saying that the losses from this major screw-up at United would be passed on to customers. I really doubt that the cut-throat competitive market for air travel would allow any fare increases. But heads should roll and management bonuses should be slashed when something like this happens because losses like this pass on to the shareholders rather than the customer, really.
Sorry to hear they did this to you but remember that it ain’t over til the DOT issues a ruling and the lawsuits settle out.