The Death of Customer Service in the Airline Industry: Part I

Ok, say maybe that was a bit dramatic because I’m really only talking about United and American, but you’ll get the idea. I want to relay two experiences I recently had with these two American carriers and how I think they could have handled them differently. I deal with United in Part I and American in Part II.

My Experience with United Airlines

So I had a soccer tournament in Las Vegas. Due to an injury, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to play, but fortunately two weeks before the schedule departure, I felt good enough to play. My daughter also had a violin recital on the Friday before the tournament so I didn’t want to leave until Saturday morning. Unfortunately for me, this meant that all of the remaining direct flights were hideously expensive (3x normal). The best deal I could find was on United, but it connected me through Los Angeles. I also had to leave from San Francisco instead of my preferred departure of San Jose. No big deal as it still got me to the game on time, so I bought the ticket.

Travel day comes and I make an on time departure to Los Angeles. Flight was uneventful and everyone was pleasant. Land in LA and head over to the next gate and everything is good to go. Get on the plane and we leave the gate on time. Everything is looking good for me to make my game until the plane stops. Not in the gate, not on the runway, but somewhere in between. And we sit there for 15 minutes. The captain comes on and explains that we are having mechanical difficulty and we’re going to have to pull back into the gate. Long story short, it ended up being a 3 hour delay and I didn’t get there until 20 minutes into the 2nd game (obviously missed the first game completely). Whatever, I certainly don’t want to fly in a plane that can’t make it and hell, I shouldn’t have booked a connection anyway. My bad.

Live large in Vegas for a couple days, finish 2nd in the soccer tournament (lost a heart breaker in the final) and generally had a pretty good time. Head to the airport to catch United’s last flight out of Vegas. I get there in plenty of time, the plane is on time and I’m good to go. I even have time for a snack and libation. Plane leaves on time and life is good.

We land in LA and begin taxiing to gate. The pilot comes on and says that our gate isn’t ready and we’ll have to sit here for 10 minutes until the gate opens up. No biggie; my connection isn’t for 50 minutes and its not like I need to clear customs or anything. 10 minutes turns into 20 and finally into 30. Pilot informs us that we’ll be switching gates. After 40 minutes they let us out of the plane.

Our gate is in the 70s and the connection is in the 60s. Anyone that knows anything about LAX knows I now have a serious run ahead of me. This after 6 soccer games in 3 days. Now is the time in the story to let everyone know that I have a job interview in San Jose at 9:00 AM the next day. I’m on a dead sprint through LAX one suitcase and my soccer bag. OJ Simpson’s got nothing on me. I have to come to a stop for about 90 seconds for some sort of security drill and I notice there are about 6 other people that appear to be in the same exact situation (although probably without the morning job interview). Drill’s over and we bust it down the 60s. And you know what? We make it. The plane is still there and we’ve made it with about 5 minutes left before departure time. Life’s good. Go up to the agent and show them are boarding pass and this is where the fun begins.

They’ve already shut the doors. What? They’ve already shut the doors. They won’t let us on. I’m looking out the window at the plane and its still there. I’m actually looking at the pilot. I actually make eye contact with the pilot and yet, there is nothing they can do. This is the last flight of the day. They won’t let us on. We argue with the gate agent for 5 minutes and the plane is still there. Then watch the plane pull out. It leaves. Without us.

I switch into emergency mode because I need to get home. The gate agent tells us to head to the front desk to see what are options are. I get there and there are no more flights on any airline. I confirm this with my iPhone. I’m screwed. United offers to put us all up in a hotel at their expense, so I enquire about their morning flights. I tell the agent my predicament and she scans the morning flights. One San Francisco flight would get me there at 9:30, but I’d never make it down to San Jose in time. What about San Jose flights? There is one flight that would get me in on time, but it is over booked and they can’t guarantee me a spot. I would get no preference (?!?) and it would be a risky move. She checks other airlines for flights that meet my requirements and they are booked as well. She can guarantee me a seat on the noon flight. I decline the hotel room.

I now have to deal with the unthinkable. It is 11:00 PM on Sunday night and I must (MUST!) be in San Jose in 10:00 hours and a flight won’t get me there. I have to drive. By myself. In the middle of the night. Through the Grapevine. Through Pacheco Pass. I head over to National Rental Car and rent a Prius (might as well save some money on gas) and drive home. And it rains. The entire way. For 7 hours.

A couple of days later I’m feeling more objective and I give United a call to ask for one of three things: 1) A total refund of my trip because they met exactly 0% of my expectations – roughly $250 2) a refund for my rental car fees plus gas – roughly $200 or 3) one round trip ticket to compensate me for the trip – roughly $0 to them.

I reach the call center agent and explain the ordeal. I explain how they messed up on both legs. How I missed some of the soccer games. How I had to drive home. I explain it all. She apologizes and informs me that the only thing that can be done is to refund me the last leg of the flight (SFO to SJO) because I didn’t use it and it was their fault. Also, because I didn’t book with them directly (I used Travelocity), I would have to get the refund from Travelocity. Other than that, it was against their policy to refund or compensate me for anything else. Uh, may I speak with a supervisor?

I get the same answer from the supervisor. They will not do anything for me. They will not give me one of the three things I’ve asked for. I tell her I’m not satisfied and this is doing irreparable harm to my views of United. She offers to have “Level 3” customer support call me back.

To my great surprise, someone from United calls me the next day. She reads me back the notes of the incident (I think she actually called it an incident). Not surprisingly, the most galling details had been left out by the previous agents. No mention that I had made it to the gate on time in LA despite United’s best efforts to prevent me from doing so. No mention of the first delayed flight that caused me to be late to my game. No mention of the fact that United offered to get me a hotel in LA but won’t pay for a similarly priced rental car. No mention of the fact that my drive home occurred in the middle of the night. No mention that it rained the whole way.

At this point, the United rep is appropriately embarrassed and apologizes profusely. No exaggeration, she must have said she was sorry over 50 times in a 20 minute phone call, but she wouldn’t (or in her words: couldn’t) give me what I was asking for due to company policy. She saw that I had flown over 200,000 miles with them. She saw that I used to be Premier Executive with them. She saw that I still made 3-5 flights with them a year. But there was nothing they could do.

And that’s that. I haven’t spoken to United since and not coincidently I haven’t flown on them either. They’ve lost me as a customer. I used the last of my United miles to fly my wife and son to Dallas for (ironically) my son’s soccer tournament. And perhaps more ironically, his flight was delayed after connecting through LAX and he was late to opening ceremonies.

So my final thought is this: is any company served by draconian policies that prevent customer service representatives from doing the right thing? Policies are designed to make the customer experience uniform and predictable. They are designed to control costs. I get that. Business is tough and the airline business is really tough. But that is no excuse. There are always edge cases and companies need to plan for those as well. I think it would have been obvious to the first agent I spoke to that this was an unusual situation and maybe it would be better handled by someone trained to deal with unusual situations. Instead they force fit me through the standard policy and the end result is a lost customer. A better policy might be to allow one level of customer support to have only one policy: use common sense to make sure our customers are thrilled with us.

I cannot imagine that this is what United intended. No company would willingly cling to $200 in order to lose $600. That is what they would have made off of me over the next 6 months. That is what my past behavior would have predicted I would do because I always used their frequent flyer program. They had all of that data available to them. I would have easily and instantly forgiven this one transgression because I had generally had a good experience with them in the past. Instead my business went to Frontier and American for my next 3 flights.

And for any of you wondering how my interview went, while a little tired, I think I did fairly well. Though I ended up with a different company the next month.