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Health & Fitness

I wrote to the CEO of United

I wrote an email to the CEO of United - and got a call back within an hour.

I wrote the following email to the President and CEO of United, Jeff Smisek:

Dear Sir:

Our most recent experiences with customer service at United Continental Holdings have been deplorable. I wrote to several news agencies to bring greater attention to the issues, but the problems with your airline’s customer service are so horrifying that my experiences were just added to the long list of complaints. I mean, how could my complaints of verbal abuse and callous treatment of a nursing mother compete with complaints of your airline losing the remains of a loved one?

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Before I launch into my grievances, I’ll preface by saying I really want to like, perhaps even love United. My second cousin is a pilot for United and his father, my great uncle, was a lifelong pilot for United after his service in WWII. I’m a Chicagoan and United is my hometown airline. I have been a United Mileage Plus cardholder for over 10 years. I plan ahead for trips, I’m patient and well-spoken, and I have worked in many low-paid service jobs.

Back in June, my husband’s grandfather died and we found ourselves booking a last-minute flight to Rhode Island on a bereavement fare. It was noted in our reservations. We were not able to select our seats when we booked so we called customer service. You see, I am a nursing mother and we were travelling with our baby. He does not like to be covered while nursing and often throws the cover off. In order to be respectful to our fellow travelers, we wished to be seated together so that my husband could assist with the baby and shield us from the view of other passengers. They recommended that we arrive early, talk with the gate agent, and they’d surely do their best to assist us. On our flight out, the gate agent was a phenomenal resource. A mother of four herself, she worked things out so that we could be seated together. I repeatedly thanked her for her kindness and understanding while assisting us. I nursed the baby during takeoff and he slept through the entire flight. During the flight, a child in first class began uncontrollably shrieking. A frenzied woman came back to see if any of the passengers had children’s Advil as the baby must have had an ear infection. We offered ours and the flight attendants provided me with a glass of wine on the house for our generosity. The parents also thanked us. It was an altogether fabulous experience.

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Our return flight was a nightmare. We got to the airport early and explained our situation to the gate agent. He curtly told us he would not help us. We boarded the plane and the flight attendants told us to see if our neighbors would help us. I have seen flight attendants make similar pleas with passengers on previous flights. Our neighbors wouldn’t help. As we sat at the gate and my neighbors looked at me disdainfully as I nursed my hungry baby (covered), the captain came on the intercom and told us there was a mechanical problem and that they’d be bringing in a mechanic to look at it. A half hour later, the captain alerted us they’d need a mechanic from Boston and that they’d be cancelling our flight. “Get on your phones,” he instructed us, as there were only two gate agents who would be able to assist us: one for the first class passengers (6) and one for the rest of us. My husband got on the phone and called United only to find that the agent (in India) could not assist us with making overnight accommodations (the next flight was at 5-something the next morning) or compensate us for meals. After all that, we needed to get in that line.

We received our hotel and food vouchers, which were only redeemable in the airport and only enough to cover Starbucks for coffee and muffins the next morning, We were lodged at a Holiday Inn Express removed from any restaurants within walking distance. We needed to call and have food delivered unless we wanted to pay for a cab ride (with a baby without a car seat) to a nearby restaurant. We woke up to a 3am wake-up call to return to the airport and catch our flight; this time we were seated together even though the seating chart visible to passengers only showed a few random middle seats. We arrived in Chicago having incurred another $20 in airport parking expenses at O’Hare, each of us missing nearly a half day of work, and my son missed a half day of day care (at $100/day, prepaid).

After this experience, I wrote to United customer service and received a form letter two weeks later apologizing for my inconvenience that included a $150 flight voucher. That didn’t begin to cover the inconvenience, deplorable behavior, and extra costs we incurred.  I wrote back and they issued another $150 voucher several weeks later.

I was so furious that I decided to cash out my miles, cancel my United Mileage Plus card with its annual fee, and use my vouchers on one last flight so I could be done with United once and for all. I was unable to combine the vouchers and our miles so I wound up having to book one round-trip ticket for myself (and our baby), one one-way ticket for my husband with miles, and another one-way ticket for my husband with one of the two vouchers. The last “slap in the face voucher” would have to go unused. In the litany of drop downs on your website, I accidentally selected my son’s name instead of my husband’s name for my reservation on the last segment. Because the policy stated there was a 24-hour window to make changes, we immediately called to rectify the situation. Then we spent over five hours on the phone being denigrated by your insulting customer service staff abroad. They took away our direct flight down on the way to Cancun and claimed there were no seats left on the flight. My husband has a friend at United who provided us with your email address. He looked into the flight we were told was full and let us know there were at least 20 open seats on that flight. International flights with unnecessary layovers with a baby because of your passive aggressive, power-tripping customer service agents? Unacceptable. To top it all off: we were still unable to use both vouchers.

This brings me back to my opening statement. I passed this story on to several news organizations and per their responses this is, apparently, your standard operating procedure. Your customer service is so notoriously bad that this is just one more anecdote to add to the list. I know that as President and CEO of United Continental Holdings, you are capable of either making a change within your organization or turning a blind eye if you find this to be acceptable practice by United with you at the helm. As I mentioned, I planned to sever my relationship with United even before that last insulting call to Customer Service. I am not writing to seek any sort of recompense, but simply to alert you of the rampant problems in the customer service your company provides. It is my hope that you’re a proactive leader who sees this as a call to action.

Regards,

Elizabeth Van Orden

Within an hour, I received a phone call from a woman who works in Mr. Smisek's office. She sincerely apologized for my family's treatment and agreed that it was, as I put it, deplorable. She went on to say that it is not the intention of United Continental Holdings to provide poor customer service; in fact, they strive for excellence in this area. She said that they would forward my email and experience on to the airports and staff members who failed us and proper disciplinary measures would be taken. Where possible, United employees would receive further training to prevent these sorts of things from happening again.

It was perhaps a 5-minute phone call, but the woman I spoke to was audibly upset for us. A personal apology does go a long way and I think that what really drove the point home to them was that I contacted customer service no less than three times to improve our situation. I never asked for anything unreasonable, but each call/email was set aside. Like I said, they didn't lose the remains of a loved one so they didn't even register as unacceptable. 

I thank everyone for their support through my saga with United. I am just one woman, but I do have to thank my parents and my high school mentors, Mr. and Mrs. Tantillo, for teaching me persistence and how to communicate effectively. I know that at least one person close to the top at United has read this story and taken it to heart - perhaps that's enough to prevent this from happening to another family.

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