Please sign in to post.

Shout-out to United for customer service

I just wanted to offer something positive about airline customer service in this age of miserable, high-priced air travel experiences. I booked flights on United/Swiss in January. Horrified at the price, but it hasn't gone down since and is often double what I paid. Naturally, there have been minor schedule changes -- different flight number, times changing by minutes. Our departure flight from Peoria to O'Hare, though, was changed to an hour later, resulting in a shorter two-hour layover. Probably would have been fine, assuming no big delays. But rather than being nervous and hoping everything went as planned, my wife, especially, would prefer a longer layover, just in case. We picked an earlier flight, which actually will give us more time to try one of the United lounges at O'Hare.

Instead of calling, which I assumed would take hours, I went online, gritted my teeth and chose "Chat with us." At first, the AI bot responded and that quickly became unsatisfactory, so I asked to chat with an agent and "Merriell" responded within a few minutes. At first there was some confusion because she (assuming female) thought I was responding to a different schedule change that we were OK with. Once we were on the same page, she made the change I requested efficiently and courteously. All told, the process took less than 30 minutes. It would have been nice to actually speak with the person but I took pains to offer sincere appreciation for making the whole thing relatively painless.

Again, simply thought I'd offer up a positive airline experience. I'm sure I'll find plenty to complain about once we actually get the trip started. ;-)

Posted by
5604 posts

We need to be careful about generalizing about airlines, so often it's just the luck of the draw who's on the receiving end of your message. Good, bad, indifferent, you just never know. When things aren't going well, it's often recommended to think of a nice way to disconnect and try, try again.

Glad he/she could assist you.

Posted by
4744 posts

We need to ...

No, we do not need to; and I think that nobody shall tell us what we need to do or think.

Imho it is a positive short experience showing that finding an efficient way of communication (channel and individual interaction) can result in a good outcome.

stoutfella, thank you for sharing.

Posted by
4671 posts

Glad you had a good experience! The chat bots exist to answer simple questions like, "How early should I arrive at the airport for my flight?" For schedule changes, it generally needs to be escalated to an actual agent. In these cases, I find that the best strategy for dealing with the airline chat bot is to type "Speak to agent" repeatedly until it transfers me to an agent.