I scheduled a flight in mid-May when I was doing some consulting. Due to a schedule mishap, the gig got canceled and I was left with a ticket to nowhere. I didn’t use it but now want to get a refund on it (or at least pay the $100 and use it for something else). This should be simple, right? I mean this happens to people all the time. Let’s go to the the carrier’s website and make it happen!
I’m a frequent fly with United and I referenced my frequent flyer number when I made the reservation. C’mon, they love to see repeat business so this should be a snap. I sign-in and quickly find the E-ticket refund area … sweet! Even easier. I enter in my ticket number (see below) and click submit. Bam! Crash and burn. I’m presented with the following dialog:
Bummer. Well, easy enough. I’ll just click through and contact United:
Huh?! Is this an accident? A random happening on a Friday afternoon? Ineptitude? Or the most genius ploy ever conceived?! If we turn off our web servers, people can’t actually get refunds easily. They’ll be forced to call in and wait a long time on their phone lines wasting the time of our underpaid minions. I want to believe its not that bad.
Let’s get on the phone then and just sort this out. Armed with my ticket number I call the 800 number and am pleased to hear the automated responses, etc. Ticking through the options I realize there isn’t actually an option to do the refund automatically. I go with plan B and select the option to speak with a customer service representative. *Click*. Wha?! Yep. After 7 minutes of air time the line goes dead. Subsequent attempts result in the same thing. Now I’m to the point where I’ve wasted 30 minutes of my time and am seriously questioning if its worth it to me to try and recoup the loss on this $438 ticket. I’m twiddling my thumbs here blogging my anger out … :-)
If I were a company that wanted to keep my customers business I’d look at it from my customer’s point of view. My customers are busy people who don’t have time to waste. Sure, I missed the scheduled flight and its my fault but odds are the flight was full (it was on a busy leg) so somebody probably filled my seat anyways. Not only that, I’ll still need to kick in $100 more just to use it as a penalty. No sweat … I don’t mind. But make it easy for me. Now I don’t want to trust you with my time as my provider. That’s a bummer and this is a no brainer. Treat your customers right and you’ll build trust and loyalty.
Or did the credit card companies take over running the airlines?