Here's my tale of United Airlines technical incompetence and lack of customer service. While it doesn't have the visual attraction or word of mouth potency of the "United Breaks Guitars" YouTube video, it reflects an equally frustrating experience with the airline.
We made plans to travel to Porto Portugal for a 10 day vacation earlier this month. When we arrived at O'Hare (ORD) for our flight from ORD - Newark (EWR) with a connection in Newark (EWR) on TAP to Porto (OPO), we were told that the United flight to Newark had been canceled for mechanical reasons and that even though we were there two hours before the flight departure time and had an hour and a half transfer time in Newark that there were no possible flight connections to Newark on any airline that would match up with the TAP flight schedule.
We assumed that United and their code share partner TAP (Portuguese Airlines) would have automatically re-booked us on flights to Porto, but this wasn't the case. In fact, initially United International Check-In personnel said that since TAP wasn't a Star Alliance partner, that our only recourse was to take a flight the next day to Newark connecting to the daily TAP flight from EWR to OPO (if they had any seats available). We corrected the harried agent and told him that TAP was a Star Alliance partner and after much work on the computer they finally re-booked us on a United flight from ORD to Frankfurt, connecting with a code share Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to OPO arriving 10 hours after our scheduled arrival time. We finally arrived and had a great time in Porto. United had other flights that would have left earlier, but was unable to get us on them.
Our return flight was on TAP from OPO - EWR, connecting with United Airlines on a flight from EWR - ORD. All went relatively smoothly on the return, or so we thought. We arrived in Newark about 45 minutes late, but still had plenty of time for our connecting flight to Chicago. We made it through customs and took our bags with their TAP baggage tags with our United Flight 651 final destination of ORD still attached to the interline domestic transfer station, assuming there would be no problems with our bags. Little did we know how wrong this assumption was to be.
When we got to ORD, we looked on the announcement board for what carousel had our bags, but couldn't find any mention of the flight. Finally after looking at the screens at individual carousels we found the appropriate one with our Flight 651 from Newark. We waited and waited for our baggage to show up, but nothing showed up.
United Airlines apparently has decided to not only charge you for bags, but to eliminate people in its baggage services area, so now requires you to go to a baggage service kiosk to report missing or delayed bags. I proceeded to the kiosk to fill out all my information on the three missing bags - a blue duffel bag, black garment bag and gray mid-size roller bag. I assumed that I would be shown a confirming screen about my claim information or would be given a print out of my claim, but this was not the way United had programmed its kiosks. I did receive a single short print-out with a United claim number that I could enter at United.com/bagtrack, Needless to say I've been trying to locate my 3 lost bags since Monday with greater and greater frustration mounting all week long.
The United Airlines bagtrack system stated:
"At this time, we have not received confirmation that your baggage has been located. We assure you we are doing all possible to search for your property and will provide an updated status as soon as we receive it. Meanwhile, please know most of our delayed bags are located and returned within the first 24 hours.
Once your baggage arrives and is available, we will contact you to arrange a convenient delivery time. If the address provided is a hotel, we will instead arrange to leave the bag(s) with the hotel front desk. It would be helpful to notify the front desk you are expecting a baggage delivery.
We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience." (emphasis added)
Given this statement of 24 hours being typical, I decided to try talking to a real person on day 2. After getting through the Interactive Voice Response system, I finally located a real person, who told me that they would put a track on the bags at Newark and would call me back when they were found. Needless to say United never called back.
I continued to check the United Airlines Bagtrack Baggage Claim Tracking website for updates and it still didn't say anything differently. I called again and got the same answer after going through the IVR tree. Meantime on Thursday night, someone from Newark Baggage Handling (not United mind you), called me to say they had found one of the bags, the blue duffel bag. I explained the whole itinerary routing and gave him the United Baggage report number, but was told that they used numeric numbers not alpha-numeric like United. He did say that he would deliver the bag to United in Newark.
I assumed that my trusty little Baggage Claim Tracking System would show that United now had this bag and it was en route to its final destination in Madison, but obviously my assumptions were wrong.
Friday afternoon, we received a call from Lufthansa at Newark telling us that they had found our bags at Lufthansa, but didn't know where to send them since there were no airline claim tags on them. We explained the whole story to the very helpful Anita at Lufthansa and she said she'd call us back and would get them to United. She called us back later that afternoon and said she was transferring them to United for delivery to us.
One would assume that once United received these bags that the Baggage Claim Tracking System would be updated with the new information, but obviously my assumptions were wrong.
I continued to log on to the Baggage Claim Tracking System with no new information found on the system, so I decided to call United Airlines yet again. I got to their call center which I assume is in India given the language skills of the agent. I told him the story yet again and he still had no records of the 3 suitcases that have been found at Newark and at Lufthansa at Newark. He put me on hold and did some further searching and finally found that two bags had flown out on United to O'Hare, but didn't know anything about the third bag. He also couldn't tell me which of the three distinctly different bags in both form and color (blue duffel, black garment or grey roller) were supposedly en route to O'Hare.
Once again, I assumed that the United Baggage Claim Tracking System would be updated, but obviously my assumptions were wrong, since I still don't have any further information and am not any closer to knowing when or if these bags will be delivered here in Madison.
Not only have I now written this lengthy blog posting about my experience with United Airlines, I've tweeted about this incident multiple times @thewebchef all week long. I would have assumed that United Airlines would have some sort of social media monitoring team to track and respond to these tweets, but obviously I'm wrong given that no feedback has been received.
I also would assume that their baggage claim tracking system would be continuously updated as new information was found but obviously I'm wrong about this too.
Now at 11:21, I got a call from the local delivery service confirming they were delivering two bags to my home and yet the baggage claim tracking system still hasn't been updated! Needless to say, I still don't know where the 3rd bag is or when it will be delivered.
