United Airlines Customer Care Gone To India

We called United Airlines customer care and received a long, tortured run-around with Indian-sounding people. It appears UAL has outsouced some customer care during some holiday hours. We complained, and as expected we received a "blah blah blah" response. Unexpectedly, the response took two weeks!

As Business 2.0 says of outsourcing customer care, The hidden costs far outweighed the potential savings in labor expenses.

I have over 200,000 paid miles on United. These weren't discounted flights - one ticket was over $1500 for a same-day flight to travel non-stop 1400 miles in economy class. United has made good money from me, and now I am beginning to comparison shop other airlines.

From: UACustomerCare24 Reply
Reply To: "UACustomerCare24 Reply"
To: <>
Subject: RE: Customer Relations email from () -Ref#:
Sent: Friday, March 3, 2006

Dear xx,

Thank you for contacting us. I truly appreciate the opportunity to acknowledge
your comments and respond.

I'm sorry that you received a poor impression of United's ability to serve you.
United staff has the training and ability to do a far better job than your
comments indicate. So I have forwarded your comments to our concerned
department for their review with the staff involved.

We appreciate this opportunity to respond and look forward to serving you.

Regards,

Erwin Pant
United Airlines Customer Relations


-----Original Message-----
Received: 2/20/06
Subject: Customer Relations email from xxx

Message type: Complaint
Response required: Yes

As long-time United fliers and previous Premier and Premier Executives with United, my husband and I were extremely disapointed to find that United calls to the 1-800-UNITED1 number were directed to India (or some country other than America). On Mon 2/20 at 8:45 pm EST, I attempted to call United to add our infant daughter to an existing itinerary. This simple matter, that had been handled efficiently the 3 previous times we flew United with our baby, turned into quite the aggravation. The representative did not speak English clearly, did not understand simple English spoken clearly, put me on hold 4 times, and stalled excessively before finally putting me on hold (again) so that I could speak with his supervisor. This agent did not know how to do his job and I had to repeatedly inform him of how the "adding-an-infant" procedure went, as he had no idea. He also told me that it was impossible to send a confirmation email (even though we'd always received one previously) and told me that it would be useless to talk to his supervisor. I am EXTREMELY disapointed that a such routine call turned into such a fiasco. I used to be able to call United and know that my travel needs would be met to my satisfaction. For me to remain loyal to a company, having quality customer service is a must.