WORST TRIP EXPERIENCE EVER
THANK YOU US AIR
Here's a letter from Jeff to US Air complaining about their ridiculous, unbelievably incompetent and unprofessional business practices with us.
Dear US Airways Customer Service Team,
I’ve been a Dividend Miles member since 1994 and in the past have been at your highest status levels.
It has taken me a while to ease my frustrations and anger with the service of US Airways from our recent trip from Nashville to Hawaii and thus this message coming over a month since our trip.
Our problems began 9-10 months prior to our trip when I tried to schedule the flights. I looked for anything in first class or coach class over a 3 month period to use FF miles. Of course, nothing was available. This in and of itself is crazy considering my flexibility in travel plans and the fact that a majority of the flights were far from booked at the time, but obviously some minimal amount of FF seats must have already been reserved. That was frustrating enough and then the ticket agents asked me to call back and try again in a few weeks/months. After frustrating weeks, I asked about using “double miles” or a way to get any open seats if we used more than the standard miles. I went through 2 agents telling me that program didn’t exist, until I finally got an agent that knew a little something and was able to help me out. As it turned out, I needed to use double miles and my wife and I decided we wanted to go First Class to Hawaii and spend the extra miles over coach.
It was still a difficult and painful process to get two seats together in first class all the way, but it was accomplished. Literally, I spent nearly 2 hrs on the phone with the agent to get this resolved. Obviously, this isn’t your most cost effective way and the agent kept apologizing for “slow systems”, etc.
Now, fast forward a couple months. Our trip was scheduled for mid-June. A few months before our departure date, I get an automated phone call stating our flight plans had been changed. WHAT I ask? I call back in. Another hour later with an agent and we finally get to the bottom of it (RIDICULOUS TO TAKE SO MUCH TIME ON THE PHONE). Apparently, one of my connection flights had been “cancelled”. So then, we had to try to rebook things. Apparently, your wonderful IT systems decided that I could land in Phoenix at 10:30am and still catch a connection flight that left at 10am. Hmmm… even I can figure that one doesn’t work, unless your systems were already calculating your on-time arrival/departure rates and figured the outbound flight would be even later to get out than the inbound flight.
So then, we try to reschedule again … another HOUR!!!!! with the same agent. (where do you get these people?). As it turned out, we had a choice of changing our flight to a day earlier, then buying our own hotel in Phoenix for an overnight and catch our original flight to HI the next day. Are you kidding me? That was your agent’s best option? After pushing the agent further and doing my own research at the same time online, we were able to work out getting all the way to HI to a different Island than originally intended, but we could manage with a cheap island hopper in HI. At least we would be overnighting in HI vs. Phoenix. We also had to extend our return trip in order to get seat reservations back to Nashville.
So now, US Airways has cost us 2 extra hotel nights (~$150 per night) and 2 extra car rental days (~$100) and extra food, not to mention the lost time and frustration of dealing with this.
After getting this worked out, we received two other calls prior to our trip from an automated US Airways system telling us our itineraries had changed again. Yet, again, I called in to verify and the agent on the phone (after 30 minutes one time and nearly 45 minutes the next time) was able to tell us our schedule was still on track (for the revised schedule). The agents did apologize for the long time in looking up the records and said “there were so many changes in the system it was hard for them to tell exactly what was going on”. Obviously, you have issues in systems and training … probably off-shoring issues as well since most problems were with obviously off-shored agents, even after getting to a “manager”. In the entire process the only one that eventually got things figured out was a woman from the US taking calls … I probably called more in line during working hours for that call to get someone from the US.
Anyway, all was good at this point with the schedule. We were up late packing and called to confirm our flight at mid-night the night before our 6:30am flight. All’s well they tell us, but only a few hours later, that would change and our real troubles began.
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We arrive at the airport at 5:30 to check in. The ticket agent, Glenn Tee (who personally did a fantastic job and was one of the few bright spots of our trip), tells us that b/c of mechanical difficulty, our 6:30 flight to Charlotte has been cancelled and they have no way of getting us to Charlotte and then to Phoenix in time to meet any connecting flights for the day. They try to buy tickets through the computer system on Delta, American, Continental, Northwest and no one has any available seats. Then they say, it looks like Southwest can get you to Phoenix and has availability … a direct flight, etc. He then proceeds to tell me that US Airways doesn’t have a partnership agreement with SW and that we would have to pay full price tickets ourselves to get there. UNACCEPTABLE. Even without a partnership, if US Airways messed things up with flights and the only way to get us there is on a SW flight, US Air should commit to paying us back for the tickets, even if we have to buy the tickets ourselves first.
So they have my wife run down to the Southwest ticketing counter to see if they could get us to Phoenix, just in case while Glenn (ticket agent) continue to work some options to see if he could get us there. My wife finds out that SW can indeed get us there, but in the meantime, some alternate flight, leaving at exactly the same time as our original flight mysteriously opens for 2 seats. Lucky we had God on our side! Glenn then tells us we have to “run” … so I first have to run to get my wife from the other ticket counter. Then run back to get through security. In the meantime, the ticket agents said they “didn’t have time” to check our luggage all the way to Hawaii and that we’d have to go to baggage, pick up our luggage and re-check it in and go back through security. They did say not to worry as we had time in the connection … I guess assuming nothing else went wrong. How much longer does it really take to check to the final destination vs. to the first connection??? Then, once we got on board, we find a dozen or so seats available, even two together. Then we sit for another 15-20 minutes while the rest of the seats were filled … so obviously, we didn’t really need to RUN all the way the gate and there should have been time to check our luggage all the way through; however, I’m glad you left as few people stranded as possible and filled the plane.
So then, we make it to Charlotte and make it to our original connecting flight on time … however; the Nashville agents or the system had cancelled our seats, thinking we missed our first flight. So now, we lost our First Class seats and had to go standby. Yes, we got seats, but it was one of two very long segments for which we used significantly more miles to go First Class.
After all this, we made it to Phoenix, got our bags, checked them back in and just made it to our connecting flight to HI, where we then landed on a small island and had yet another long layover to get to our final destination of Honolulu. Needless to say, this was FAR from the relaxing First Class trip we expected with US Airways.
On way back
We called 6 hours before flight- everything was fine and our schedule was still as planned … Maui (we had to switch islands due to the original scheduling issues via an Island Hopper Flight) to Phoenix to Charlotte to Nashville. We were scheduled on first class and things looked good except a 4 hour layover in Phoenix, but at least we thought we would be able to get there in time to make the flight.
Then about 6 hours later, we get to the Maui airport, check in early and find out that for “some reason” that the agents couldn’t explain, our connections had been changed and we now were scheduled from Maui to Las Vegas to Phoenix to Charlotte to Nashville. Now, instead of a 4 hr layover, we had tight connections, but if everything went well should be able to still make our original Charlotte flight. Of course, their systems couldn’t easily handle a 4 connection flight and that started a new set of issues, getting managers and eventually having someone manually over-ride the systems to get our luggage checked in. However, after all that, we were told, at least we were still booked in First Class all the way back.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the story ended there …
There had been a fire on the island the day before and all 200+ people at the airport waiting for the plane knew that and made alternative driving plans … everyone that is EXCEPT the FLIGHT CREW! They finally showed up three hours late and blamed the fire for needing take alternative routes to get to the airport. No Kidding … everyone else figured that out. Now, everyone on the flight is going to be missing connections … that will be fun and no one could get rescheduled ahead of time because 1) it was the middle of the night and we ended up waiting until about 3am to get the flight out and the rest of the airport was closed and 2) because US Air understandably didn’t want to schedule connecting flights until our flight was in the air, but they assured us as soon as we took off a “team” would be rescheduling all our tickets as best they could.
We get to Phoenix and they had only ONE ticket agent ready to tell everyone their new connecting flights in Phoenix. Are you kidding????!!!! 200+ people needing help and that’s all US Air could muster? Ridiculous. My wife started waiting in line but I could tell we would likely miss our next connection flight if we stood in line too long to even find out about it. So I went down the terminal, found several US Air agents standing at empty gates, looking less than busy. Anyway, one of them pulled up our itinerary and told us what gate to go to, however, they were already boarding, so it was running time again … back to my wife, then across multiple concourses to our gate.
Guess what. We are now on standby for our ORIGINAL FLIGHT where we had FIRST CLASS seats reserved! Now, we end up in coach, middle seats and obviously not sitting next to each other. Nice way to end a “romantic” and relaxing vacation. So we get to Charlotte, reasonably on-time, but we barely have time to make it to our gate. This only fast walking time vs. running through the airport at least. I show the gate agent my original boarding passes that I received from HI before we left, which were for 2 first class seats. He told me they were fine and to board the plane. So we did. About 10 minutes later, two other people came and tried to sit in our seats. Yes, you guessed it, they had cancelled our seats AGAIN … and put two passengers who were on standby for first class in our seats. The flight attendant had the nerve to tell us we needed to get up and give up the seats and go get new seats. I told them they would have to escort us off the plane if that was the case, we were already seated and the other couple could get new seats. A little rude, but my patience for US Air was about gone. They told me there were no other First Class seats available and that we would need to move to coach and get new seat assignments. I reminded them politely that they would have to escort us off the plane if that was their decision and quickly explained a few prior highlights to our trip on US Air. They left, went back to the gate agent and even though “there were no other first class seats available”, miraculously, this couple found 2 first class seats as well. Then after the doors closed, it turned out there were TWO EMPTY first class seats when all was done. The incompetence is almost hard to even believe!
Yes, and to wrap things up nicely, after we arrived in Nashville, our luggage was no where to be found. Then we waited nearly an hour before being able to talk to someone and put in a lost luggage claim. About 30 minutes of that was waiting for an agent to even show up as the line continued to build. I can’t remember, but a day or two later our luggage finally did arrive, but the handles on one of our suitcases were totally destroyed. At this point, were just too frustrated and irritated with US Air to even file a claim for the damage to our luggage.
I wish these were vast exaggerations, but unfortunately, these were our true experiences. I used to travel for my job on a weekly basis for nearly 10 years. The latter few years of my travel I switched to US Airways and quickly reached your highest Dividend Miles status, thus the reason we still had so many miles available to use for “double points first class tickets to Hawaii”.
I feel we should be refunded a majority of the Dividend Miles we used on the trip … at LEAST the difference between basic coach seats and our double first class miles. Better would be for you to add miles to our account to try to do something to help restore our faith in US Airways and hope we fly again with your airline.
Secondly, I would like monetary compensations for 2 additional hotel nights, 2 days of food, 2 days of extra rental car, and island hopper flights, which was easily $500 or more in our costs, not to mention extra parking at the airport. I do have receipts for anything in question, but don’t expect full monetary compensation. It is certainly possible that I would return to high levels of air travel in the future, not to mention our personal travel now and in the future. I am looking forward to seeing how you can work with us and what compensation/dividend mile adjustments can be made to at least help offset this horrendous experience with US Airways.
Thank you,
Jeff Johnson
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