Aug/090
The Customer Relations voucher that’ll cost you dearly
I recently flew with United Airlines to Hawaii. On-board the first flight between London and Washington there were numerous problems, from cold food due to faulty ovens, to problems with the toilets and dodgy in-flight entertainment and on arrival at Washington Dulles, United Airlines ground staff boarded the plane to apologise for the problems and informed the entire flight that we would all receive a voucher for use on a future flight on completion of a postcard that we would later mail in.
Several weeks after returning home the promised vouchers arrived, good for one year, they could not be used to book online, so you either had to book via the telephone and mail in the voucher or make a booking in person at the airport.
After researching several flights, I made the trip to the airport to make my booking, I would fly to Denver, spend 3 nights, before flying home via Washington, with a final night there so that I could take the day flight to London, unitedairlines.co.uk quoted me an ecconomy fare (ticket type W) of £360.80. Great.
At the ticketing counter, the agent input the flight details and several minutes later, told me that "that's £680". Horrified, I asked her to check again, was the ticket type the same? My quote is for a W fare, "yes, this is a W fare". When I asked why there was a difference, "Internet fares are only available on the Internet", I told her that I could not use my Customer Relations voucher online, "sorry, but that fare does seem really low are you sure it is right?". There was no point questioning the policy, I got her to check another flight, a simple round trip to San Francisco, suspious that she even checked she told me, "Yes, that's about the same". I left it.
United Airlines clearly played a sneaky trick here, firstly, they made good the bad experience that was flying with them, the promise of a voucher meant that my holiday didn't get off to quite the bad start after all, the arrival of the voucher again played well and reiterated my good feelings for them, having the voucher for several months, left me feeling good, knowing I had it, and that I'd be able to use it on a future flight, then, finally, trying to use the voucher, "BOOM! We gotcha!" for this voucher is totally worthless, using it would actually cost a considerable sum!