Staff! United owed us $8,370 in cash but offered credit. That’s not what we paid for.
My typical advice in this type of situation is to complain rationally, respectfully, and concisely through one customer service channel (call or online form, for example), then another (email), then another (social media), hoping that eventually someone with the time and training to step in will see your point. Ms. Jankowski, United’s spokeswoman, had a more specific suggestion. “In this case, I think our social care team – who can be found on Twitter and Facebook 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – would have been very helpful in this situation,” she said. “They have the expertise and resources to escalate this to a reimbursement specialist.”
Mr Hobart added that customers should not be experiencing any of this. “The customer has taken the right paths to address this,” he said. “Our goal is to tackle it early, tackle it on the first try and tackle it correctly.”
When I urged United on what could be done concretely to ensure similar situations – or others but equally Byzantine – would be avoided in the future, he said executives in the “customer leadership group” had been notified and “were very interested in this particular scenario.”
“We’re going to look at this and learn from it, use it as a way to prevent something similar in the future,” he said.
Maybe. But let’s finish by looking at what you, Ellen, have done here – and then compare it to something I’ve done wrong recently in my own travels. Realizing that potential and unpredictable health issues could interfere with your plans, you opted to book refundable tickets, something many cheaper, less thoughtful fliers (i.e. me) often stubbornly refuse to pay extra for. Then you carefully read the email confirmation you got (something I’m also guilty of not doing), immediately noticed a problem and called within 24 hours, when airlines need to refund or rebook you, to correct it. In this case, the airline was still mistaken in the way it handled your refund, but you ultimately won.