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Remove United from your flight results

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Re: Remove United from your flight results

#61

Post by foxylad »

sitepodmatt wrote: post #10

United screwed up by not having a decent incentive system in place to avoid deplaning people. People have presented many options, including taking a ballpark figure on checkin, or whilst on the airplance a speaker announcement anyone to travel later for $800, wait a minute, $1000, $1200, okay great thanks folks.. That was extremely badly handled and shocking that no process was in place for this - as last minute crew…

Would renting a private jet have been a viable solution for United to get their four employees where they needed to go? I have no idea what it costs, but given they were in the hole for several thousand dollars in refunds, it might have saved them money as well as grief.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#62

Post by ceautery »

mc32 wrote: post #44
sitepodmatt wrote: post #10

United screwed up by not having a decent incentive system in place to avoid deplaning people. People have presented many options, including taking a ballpark figure on checkin, or whilst on the airplance a speaker announcement anyone to travel later for $800, wait a minute, $1000, $1200, okay great thanks folks.. That was extremely badly handled and shocking that no process was in place for this - as last minute crew…

The company representatives, i.e. employees handled the situation very poorly. He deserves some compensation and by convention, an apology. He's looking for a payout. Some people just want justice --some people want more, much more. The McDonald's woman initially just wanted (restorative) justice --Mac Donald's to pay for medical bills --McD went full corporate and got handed by the jury. Here it's the opposite, righ…

>> He's looking for a payout.

[Citation needed]

Edit: OK, then.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#63

Post by shas3 »

United has a history of being a company with a crappy culture. Basically, Uber today is the United of the tech world and United has been the Uber of the airlines industry for the last few decades. Stacking metaphors, even when there were many fish in the aviation sea, United was the rotten one.

Holman Jenkins wrote an informative and funny piece in today's WSJ on this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/make-america-great-boycott-unit...

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#64

Post by terrestrial »

peteretep wrote: post #18
sitepodmatt wrote: post #10

United screwed up by not having a decent incentive system in place to avoid deplaning people. People have presented many options, including taking a ballpark figure on checkin, or whilst on the airplance a speaker announcement anyone to travel later for $800, wait a minute, $1000, $1200, okay great thanks folks.. That was extremely badly handled and shocking that no process was in place for this - as last minute crew…

The general policy makes sense for United , they just got unlucky this time. A law requiring all bumping to be voluntary would fix this, and require United to come up with a system that wasn't just "meh, call security".

A law would not "fix" this. It's a workaround. Which law was this guy breaking to begin with?

The problem is lack of scrutiny by the officers handling this. The process should have gone something like this:

United: "Hey, we have this guy refusing the leave the airplane. Can you help us remove him?"

Chicago PD: "Why won't he leave the airplane?"

United: "He says he needs to catch this flight for something work-related."

Chicago PD: "Is he threatening other passengers? Why do you need to remove him?"

United: "We need to fill the seat for some last-minute flight crew. Look, this is really important, can't you just come and take this guy for us? It's already becoming something of a scene."

Chicago PD: "So what you are saying is, you are asking a paying passenger who is already seated in a departing plane to leave. And he won't do so voluntarily. Can't you ask someone else to go instead?"

United: "We tried, but no one is willing to take less than $1600 worth of our $50 flight coupons. Ridiculous! We do no more than $1200 per FAA guidelines."

Chicago PD: "But did he break any laws?"

United: "Not sure, maybe there's something in the ToS."

Chicago PD: Click

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#65

Post by greenhatman »

mc32 wrote: post #44
sitepodmatt wrote: post #10

United screwed up by not having a decent incentive system in place to avoid deplaning people. People have presented many options, including taking a ballpark figure on checkin, or whilst on the airplance a speaker announcement anyone to travel later for $800, wait a minute, $1000, $1200, okay great thanks folks.. That was extremely badly handled and shocking that no process was in place for this - as last minute crew…

The company representatives, i.e. employees handled the situation very poorly. He deserves some compensation and by convention, an apology. He's looking for a payout. Some people just want justice --some people want more, much more. The McDonald's woman initially just wanted (restorative) justice --Mac Donald's to pay for medical bills --McD went full corporate and got handed by the jury. Here it's the opposite, righ…

He got assaulted. That is a case for severe damages, usually.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#66

Post by mc32 »

ceautery wrote: post #62
mc32 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company representatives, i.e. employees handled the situation very poorly. He deserves some compensation and by convention, an apology. He's looking for a payout. Some people just want justice --some people want more, much more. The McDonald's woman initially just wanted (restorative) justice --Mac Donald's to pay for medical bills --McD went full corporate and got handed by the jury. Here it's the opposite, righ…

>> He's looking for a payout. [Citation needed] Edit: OK, then.

I don't think one is wont to hire these types[1] if one is not looking for a payout:

"The 69-year-old medical professional has hired corporate law specialist Stephen Golan and personal injury specialist Thomas Demetrio".

[1]http://perezhilton.com/2017-04-12-united-airlines-david-dao-...

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#67

Post by [deleted] »

petilon wrote: post #31
sfilargi wrote: post #3

I understand the sentiment, but if I would stop using every corp that fucked somebody up, I would probably have to move somewhere where there is no civilization.

If it was just that the flight attendants fucked up by calling in the cops in a situation that didn't really call for it that would be one thing. But it was more than that. The CEO made the situation worse by not apologizing and instead blaming the passenger for being "disruptive and belligerent". It was only after the stock dropped that he apologized. This shows that poor customer service is ingrained in this corp.

[deleted]

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#68

Post by mc32 »

greenhatman wrote: post #65
mc32 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company representatives, i.e. employees handled the situation very poorly. He deserves some compensation and by convention, an apology. He's looking for a payout. Some people just want justice --some people want more, much more. The McDonald's woman initially just wanted (restorative) justice --Mac Donald's to pay for medical bills --McD went full corporate and got handed by the jury. Here it's the opposite, righ…

He got assaulted. That is a case for severe damages, usually.

Sure. Photographers get assaulted too. They don't get huge payouts --you go file charges and the judge issues a sentence, some damages. Usually not a jackpot.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#69

Post by rm999 »

The comments in here are oddly fatalist about the whole thing. We put a lot of trust in airlines; and not just in safety or to get us somewhere, but we also give them an unusual number of legal protections once we're in their care.

When the drama first started I kind of wrote it off: "this must have been a misunderstanding compounded by a single employee's stupidity". But when I found that it was not only condoned, but fully defended by the company top-down, red flags went off. Then, the inevitable outrage led to past stories resurfacing, with a pattern of absurd insensitivity (abused dogs, broken guitars, sexist clothing policies, etc). Then, I started remembering some terrible experiences I've personally had on United. Like the time they left me stranded in India for 2 days (rumor is the staff did this on purpose to protest some new policy around maximum flight times), then made me wait 3+ hours to get approved for a hotel room at 1 am even though I was flying business class (which would have been wrong even if I wasn't business class!) Or the time a gate agent lied to me about contacting a connecting flight, leading me to miss an entire day on my Thailand trip. I have many more of these.

My point here is that United really does seem to have ingrained issues that directly harm their customers. This toxic culture doesn't benefit them in any way, but if nobody cares they'll have no incentive to stop.

Re: Remove United from your flight results

#70

Post by wklauss »

donald123 wrote: post #23
sitepodmatt wrote: post #10

United screwed up by not having a decent incentive system in place to avoid deplaning people. People have presented many options, including taking a ballpark figure on checkin, or whilst on the airplance a speaker announcement anyone to travel later for $800, wait a minute, $1000, $1200, okay great thanks folks.. That was extremely badly handled and shocking that no process was in place for this - as last minute crew…

And also, those $800, $1000 are just United voucher. The worst is they only issue 16 or 20 $50 vouchers, you can only use one voucher each time, and can only book through phone (which some people say is usually more expensive than online), oh and expire after a year. When more people know that, they are not stupid, it's useless even if they give you $10k. Basically they caused this no volunteer situation themselves.

You can use United vouchers online. I have volunteered a couple of times in the past and used them without any problem on United's website. You can also use them for multiple trips if the amount on the voucher is not exhausted. They do expire after a year, though, that is correct.
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