Portland, ME > Houston, TX; Houston, TX > Ontario, CA; Ontario, CA > Portland, ME. Fifteen days, four cities, three weary travelers. Just days after Sofia was able to stand up and walk confidently on her own, we confined her to our laps for torturous travel across the entire country, one corner to the next and back.
All things considered, I'm proud of her for staying mostly chipper and for the amazing ability she has to bless strangers with her friendly smile and engagement. That said, the trek back, the longest journey, was pretty much pure torture. Here is my evidence that the COO of United has really dropped the ball in actually merging their company with Continental, taking our money without delivering anything but a big old headache.
1) Flight schedule changed. It happens, I realize that. But when you're traveling all day long with a toddler, you have picked your flight schedule with so much thought, care, sweat, and fear, considering napping, feeding, wiggling needs. To login to check in for our flight and see that our very long day was going to be made even longer by a few hours was a big stress.
2) Hanging up on customers calling into customer service. Multiple times in a row. Attempting to change our flight schedule to something more amenable, we got all manner of excuses related to downed computers and lack of digital integration across Continental and United and it took all day to get a better flight, for which they could not even provide us with actually boarding passes.
3) Giving one passenger boarding passes for all three flights, only getting the other passenger to the first of three destinations. It's one thing if the two airlines can't communicate to print each other's boarding passes, but why one person's and not the others?
4) Giving your infant a boarding pass for only one of three flights for your travel. Call me crazy, but I'd like to keep her with me for the whole trip, if that's ok with you. I kinda like her.
5) Flight attendants being full out rude to stressed out mothers. Add to that that I'd been up since 4am and had been up with Sofia twice in the night, I didn't need that woman's tude. Unprofessional.
6) Whizzing down airplane isles so fast that nursing mothers do not have time to move their sleeping babies head from the path of the food cart. Oops, hope I didn't give her a concussion. ?!?!
7) Forcing parents to board a plane and sit there for an hour trying to keep their toddler calmed and contained, only to declare a mechanical failure and de-boarding the plane, making them do it all over again. That's right people, four planes in one day with a one year old. Aren't you jealous?
8) Losing tired, strung out family's luggage, including the car seat the baby is legally required to travel home in.
9) Returning family's luggage, but only after having stolen a few Christmas gifts and baby's first birthday presents out of the bags - cause, you know, they deserved a tip after all the trouble they'd been going through for us all day.
10) Giving angered customers run around on customer service line yet again, claiming problems with the merger. Yeah, I got that, the merger is a headache for us all friends. And it was over a year ago. About time to get your act together.
Yes I did cry through one of these entire flights. But Sofia also did me the graceful act of sleeping through another one of the four legs. Still, I may never fly again. United has ruined what was once a wonderful airline with exemplary customer service (Continental). But to keep this from being nothing but rant, I would like to turn to another company that should serve as an example to these nincompoops as to how to handle customers properly: Amazon.
Kindle has trouble connecting to whisper net. I log onto Amazon.com to find customer support. I'm directed to focus my problem so they can give me the right number. They have me enter my phone number in. Within seconds, my phone rings. I have not had to call, I have not waited on hold, I have not had to enter in any information about myself. The representative knows me by name, knows all my account information, knows the problem I am having and immediately jumps into trouble shooting with me. Once we determine it's really not working, and I'm not just incompetent, he's already jumping into sending me a brand new Kindle [mine was two years old], free shipping, next day, only $40. Its shiny and new and I'm pumped and the entire call took a total of 20 minutes of my valuable time. Gold Stars and Two Claws up Amazon, you rock my world. Will you please provide some tutorials to United?
If you recall, it was United that charged us $1800 to fly to Colorado when the bus crashed.
ReplyDeleteOops! Hope we don't get any angry posts from them!