United Airline’s Customer Service is Crap

I know that the concept of customer service is quickly becoming extinct, but my experience today was another prime example of just how bad its gotten.  Before I get into my rant, I will admit some responsibility for getting myself into the situation that led to the rubbish customer service.

I had to go to Chicago a couple of weeks ago for work and I flew United up there.  If you need a receipt with an e-ticket, you’re supposed to print one when you use the self-service kiosk.  Without fail, I forget to do that.  I’m too busy making sure that I’m getting on the right flight and that my flight is on time to remember to select the print receipt option.

Fast forward to after my trip and I’m trying to fill out my travel vouchers without my receipt.  Doesn’t go so well.  So I try to contact United to get a receipt and hilarity ensues.  I’ll just summarize so you don’t have to experience the frustration I did.

To get a receipt for a flight you’ve already taken you can log into the website with your frequent flier number and look at past itineraries…except when the website won’t retrieve your flight even though they’ve given you credit for the flights on your frequent flyer account.

That doesn’t work so next you try to contact the “refunds” department to get a receipt.  yeah, that makes sense.  The awesome thing is that the phone number for the refunds department just tells you to go to the website where you got the number for the refunds department.  And when you press zero trying to get to an operator it just disconnects you.

Then I called the “customer relations” number twice and got disconnected from them while on hold twice.

Then I tried to access two other departments that wouldn’t even give me the option to talk to a person.  And when I finally found a number where I could talk to someone, they told me they couldn’t pull up my record and to go to the website or send an email to the “refunds” address that would take 5-10 business days to get a response.

By my approximation, I ended up calling five numbers/departments six times with a total of five disconnections talking to one human being and got basically no help at all.  Stellar record.  Lesson learned: print your damn receipt at the airport knowing how bad United’s customer service sucks.