United Scarelines Part II
I forwarded this post to United Airline’s press office and asked them to comment. Not surprisingly the press representative who responded via email is as blissfully oblivious as the rest of the people at UAL Corporate.
This is her unbelievable response:
Hello Mark,Thank you for your note and I am very sorry to hear what happened. I am happy to have my colleagues look into this, but I do need your help such as date of travel and flight number. Kind Regards,
Robin Urbanski
United Press Office 312-xxx-xxxx
Like every single United Airlines Customer Abuse Agent I spoke with on the telephone, and all but one on the ground in Chicago Ms. Urbanski did not pay attention to a single thought that I conveyed. Astoundingly enough she even has to ask me what day all this occurred! I have to guess that system-wide collapses are such a common occurrence at United Airlines that their own press relations people need to be told which specific day-long disaster they are being asked about!
For the benefit of United Airlines managers who may be reading this, I will type slowly. I wrote a several hundred word article centered on the fact that some complete, drooling, blathering idiot at UAL Headquarters apparently looked at the Weather Channel and saw all those huge bright red Doppler Radar echos as bulls eyes at which to aim all their airplanes. That person then apparently put all the telephones on call-forwarding to New Delhi and went home, having done a full day’s work, leaving “customers” and flight crews to fend for themselves.
“Sigh”, knowing that I have to deal with UAL this Saturday to get home I don’t know if I’m up to returning the nice, oblivious lady’s email with the call that she asked for, but will give it a shot and report back.
Stay tuned.
UPDATE: I simply didn’t have it in me to deal directly with those people today, I am far too busy. So here is the email I sent back:
You are so totally kidding, right? Maybe you should actually read what is at the link I sent you.
December 5th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Mark,
I read what happened to you. No matter what the comlaint and how bad you are treated, unfortunately NOTHING WILL CHANGE! They have us over a barrel and they know it. No matter what, we will keep coming back because we don’t have a choice. Every airlines knows this, so they don’t have to provide good customer service or even a positive flight experience. There may be airlines that are better than others, but that’s probably by chance and not my any conscious effort on their part. Just think–we’re paying to be treated like cattle!