YAUR: Yet Another United Airlines Rant
Do United Airline executives realize how poorly they treat their own customers? Are their pricing and rules intentional or just a mistake?
As a business person, I am amazed by how United Airlines treats its best customers. Some companies get so removed from their customers that they enforce policies that make them less successful. United seems to have developed a system that intentionally drives its best customers into the arms of its competitors.
To establish that I have been a best customer of United: I have flown 1.7m miles on United Airlines over the past 35 years. By United’s own rules, that makes me a permanent Premier Gold customer. At United, you can be Premier, Premier Silver, Gold, or Platinum, Premier 1K (try reading the qualifications document; it’s sort of like reading the U.S. tax code) and a “secret” one called Global Services (read this diversion on GS-MAD, Global Service Maintenance Anxiety Disorder). Like any loyalty program, each stage confers on its participants additional privileges.
Apparently being Premier Gold doesn’t mean shit, even though gold is still shiny and seems like it should be worth something more than just being treated like airborne cattle. I have, over the past few years, been offered an alternative and have enthusiastically adopted that alternative: Virgin America. I am now a Virgin America Elevate Gold customer, where gold is still shiny and worth something!
Enough context! Two interactions with United recently. And a bonus interaction with Alaska Airlines, which now owns Virgin America.
UA 5448: I bought a ticket on this flight from SFO to Albuquerque because it was the only flight that fit between two appointments in San Francisco and Santa Fe. I ended up with a first-class, one-way ticket for $186.20. I was feeling pretty good.
But then my schedule changed. I decided I wanted to go two days earlier and no longer needed to fit between the two appointments. I called United. Their basic policy is that you have 24 hours to cancel your ticket without cost. After 24 hours, you have to pay a $200 change fee plus the difference in air fare. The agent on the phone, who greeted me by saying thank you for being such a loyal customer of United, told me that I would have to pay $200 plus $320 (for the difference in first class airfares) or $520. That’s 2.8x the cost of the original ticket! The agent agreed with me that it would be less expensive to just cancel my ticket and buy a new one.
So I did cancel my ticket and wrote off the $186.20 I paid United for doing absolutely nothing. Then I bought a new ticket on Southwest Airlines, which has three daily non-stops from Oakland versus United’s one non-stop from SFO. Southwest doesn’t have classes on their planes, but it does offer “Business Select”, which lets me board and choose my seat in the first group. My new ticket cost $423.94 (less than United would have charged to change my itinerary). Southwest does not charge a change fee if you change the itinerary, and gives you credit for the whole fare if you cancel.
In other words, United treats me like an idiot. Southwest treats me like an adult. I prefer to be treated like an adult. I’ve grown fond of flying on Southwest Airlines, even though I am merely a member of their loyalty program, A-List.
UA E8xxxx: In this case, I bought tickets for my daughter’s family (two adults and two kids; these two kids happen to be my grandchildren and are granted Premium Exalted status in my world, way beyond Gold or even Platinum!). It’s complicated because they are going all the way to Edinburgh, Scotland for her cousin’s wedding (where the Premium Exalted Grandkids will be ring bearers) and then coming back through New York for some family time on the East Coast before returning to SFO.
When I asked United.com to price the itinerary as a single trip, it gave me a of $11,201.76 for all four tickets. I discovered I could buy two separate itineraries from SFO to Newark ($3,065.60) and from Newark to Edinburgh ($3,503.84), which costs $4,632.32 (41%) less. Then I discovered that the only benefit of the extra $4,632.32 for a one-stop ticket is that my daughter could check their bags from San Francisco all the way through to Edinburgh. What a deal?!
Hey, my daughter and her family are special but $4,632 is a lot of bucks! I went ahead and bought the Newark-Edinburgh tickets to make sure I got a low-cost ticket to Edinburgh. Then I started looking for the cheapest round-trip fare between San Francisco and Newark, even though my daughter would have to leave security, collect her bags, recheck them and re-enter security for the onward flight.
Guess what?! The cheapest fare round trip from San Francisco to Newark is — ta da — on United Airlines! I can buy tickets with nearly six hours on layover to reduce the risk of a late flight from SFO and still give them enough time to do the United Dance in Newark.
Still, I thought this was kind of ridiculous so I called United again. I asked the agent if I could add two flights to an existing itinerary. Her first response? “Well, Mr. Alsop, that will require a change fee for each ticket and then you will need to pay the difference in fares.” I already knew that. Everybody who flies on United knows that. And I already knew that I would have to pay $4,632.32 as the difference in fares, but she was also telling me that I would have to pay $200 per ticket or an additional $800 to “change” an itinerary in which I was not actually changing any of the flights I had already bought.
I’m glad you’re still with me. You might think this is somewhat Orwellian. The agent was merely parroting the rules that had already been defined, pretty much the same as the online system would do. I told the agent that I could already ask the online system to do what she said; I asked if there was any special consideration for Premier Gold members. She said no. I hung up.
So now we got back to the original premise of this rant. Since I favor the attitude of Virgin America toward its customers and since Virgin America has decided to compete vigorously with United on this particular route, I figured I could buy round trip tickets from SFO to EWR on Virgin America. But the Virgin tickets are slightly more expensive. What should I do? Buy the more expensive Virgin tickets and make my daughter lug the bags from Terminal C to Terminal A? Or buy the less expensive United tickets and save her the lugging part? I still haven’t decided.
AS 386: This is the bonus section. My wife and I are planning a get-away weekend in Portland, Oregon, where United competes with both Alaska and Virgin America (which have merged but are still operating separately). United has no schedule advantage, so I only looked at the Alaska and Virgin flights available. I put my wife on a return flight (we’re not returning together) on Virgin America, even though we are taking the same Alaska flight to Portland. When I bought the ticket, I made a stupid mistake. I bought it for the wrong day. When I called Alaska Airlines, I described what I had done, the agent laughed and said no problem! She discovered that Virgin did not offer the same fare on the right day, so we switched the return ticket to an Alaska flight at about the same time and for the same price!
Oh, and I am not a special customer of Alaska Airlines (although she knew that I am an Elevate Gold customer at Virgin and acknowledged that on the call). Alaska apparently treats all their customers like adults.
So here’s the pattern: United Airlines is a big bureaucratic mess where rules are set remotely by some drone and then enforced by people who have no leeway in dealing with customers. Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Virgin America all, despite different heritages and histories, have similar attitudes toward customer service: treat your customers like adults. Which airline would you do business with, if you had a choice?