Complaining about poor service is one thing. Making the compensation for your complaints a cornerstone of your travel budget is entirely another.
Chris Elliott posts a complaint from a United Airlines customer whose Mileage Plus account was frozen, preventing him from redeeming miles, but still allowing accrual of further miles. On its surface, this seems silly of the airline. It’s almost like hedge fund accounting: Deposit anytime, withdraw when we let you. Bernard Madoff would be proud.
But the airline isn’t just being vindictive here. Here’s a snippet from their letter of response to the customer, which presents an alternative explanation, to say the least:
During this last year, you have contacted us well over 200 times concerning alleged disservice issues. As discussed in my phone conversation with you yesterday, the frequency of your contacts with us is very disturbing in light of the fact that you have only flown with us for the last 6 months.
Accordingly, we have completed a historical review of these contacts and have concluded that a majority appear to be directed toward securing goodwill compensation in the form of entitlements, i.e. certificates and miles for future travel and upgrades. Our review found that although you flew only 24,891 actual miles in 2008, you contacted us to obtain mileage compensation of 68,500 miles, numerous upgrades, and $5,125 in dollar off certificates.
Ouch. Granted, I haven’t spoken with either the passenger or the airline, but assuming the facts are correct, then the passenger sounds like he was trying to milk United dry. Sorry, that’s not cool.
Some of those complaints must have been legit, because they provided a boatload of compensation. (And let’s not even get started on the accounting problems that UA is exhibiting, by not being aware of multiple payments for the same complaint.) So the airline isn’t entirely innocent.
United’s says its response has been to reverse over 100,000 miles from his account, “68,500 miles credited originally and [...] 40,000 miles for the duplicate dollar off certs [...] obtained and used for [...] tickets.” The account is apparently unfrozen again.
So what do you think? When customers get busted trying to game the system, should the airline lay the smack down, or should they show mercy and let it ride? Or somewhere in the middle?
Hit the poll below, voice your opinion in comments, and above all, for God’s sake, don’t be That Guy.
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February 13th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Sadly, this “customer” isn’t the only one trying doing this. If you follow sites like Flyertalk, there are people who deliberately book fully refundable tickets on flights where it looks like there may be an overbooking situation. They then volunteer, and if the flight is indeed oversold, collect the voluntary denied boarding compensation and then cancel the ticket and get their original money back. And if the flight turns out to not be oversold, they just cancel the ticket anyway and move on to the next opportunity. How this is different from stealing I don’t know.
February 13th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
If an airline is bad enough to warrant 200 complaints, than the complainer is an idiot for continuing to fly that airline. I’m a satisfied United frequent flier, but I hope that the airline cuts this guy loose and tightens its complaints department so this doesn’t happen again. That sort of waste drives up my costs.
February 15th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
200 complaints in 6 months is about 1 per day. This person has no life. We get the same sort of guest from time to time in the hotel business as well. Sometimes the only thing you can say is “obviously our service will never be up to your standards and we apoligize for not being the sort of property that can meet your needs. No matter what we do, we will never be able to aspire to your expectations so we won’t waste any more of your time in trying. I will be happy to call you a taxi and send the bellman up to your room to assist you with your belongings. Do you need assistance in securing a reservation at a property you feel will be more to your liking?”
February 16th, 2009 at 9:18 am
This reminds me of a couple I’d read about on the Cruise Critic message boards last year. Apparantly they took a number of cruises (double-digit) with the same cruise line, and every time they had “major problems” which gave them room upgrade and/or on board credits; they then proceeded to openly brag about it on the message boards.
The cruise line in question did exactly what United did – they canceled an existing reservation for this couple (some months out) and told them politely to take their business elsewhere. When they started to whine to the news media about how they were dumped by the Big Bad Cruise Line because they’d complained about their problems on their most recent cruise, all their other complaints hit the light of day as well.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Anyone who complains 200 times in six months needs to have his head examined. And any airline that doesn’t step in earlier to stop the giveaways needs to have its accounting examined. Like Al B. said, that sort of waste drives up everyone’s costs. UA was stupid to let this go on this long.
Since they’re all idiots, but since the customer was actively trying to rip off the airline, UA should revoke some miles, like they did, and let him cash out what he’s got, but then cancel the account. And once he’s tapped out, put him on an internal no-fly list. “You’re money’s no good here, mister.”
February 17th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I’ll add that I find it amusing that this guy racked up all these miles and vouchers, but didn’t manage to cross the threshold for Premier status. He fell short by 109 miles. Heh. Of course, he probably complained and got bumped up to Premier Executive 1K, for all we know.
Oliver, yes, there are people on FlyerTalk who brag about this sort of thing, and I suspect that many will get their come-uppance someday. It’s not quite stealing, in my opinion, insofar as they’re playing within the boundaries of the rules set out by the airline. But there’s no reason the airline has to continue to put up with it.
Credit card companies, for example, actively measure how often you call their customer service number and tax their resources. If you’re not turning them a profit, especially in this economic climate, they’ll cut you loose. In the case of the passenger in the post, United should be mining its data to find customers who are actively working the system to use complaints to fly for free. There’s clearly an opening here for an IT consultancy to make a case for new business…
February 18th, 2009 at 10:53 am
I think it depends on why the airlines saw fit to give him such major compensation. I doubt he was crying about a package with too few peanuts in these two hundred calls/emails he made. It sounds to me as if something was gravely wrong and they decided to pay out to keep a customer happy.
If they weren’t paying attention and were paying on the same small complaint repeatedly that is their fault, too. I somehow doubt that is what happened.
If he did something underhanded and deceptive to gain this compensation he should lose it. But nowhere in the Airline’s letter does it even suggest he did.
With the limited information we have I would say the airline has to suck it up on this one.
February 18th, 2009 at 11:54 am
No one in their right mind would continue to do business with any company if they experienced 200 instances of poor service. Not in 6 months. Not in 6 years.
The guy is attempting to commit fraud.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Tammigirl, I disagree with you. He may have complained about the number of peanuts in the package, that his plane went down in the Hudson River, or anywhere in between. I don’t think that we can make assumptions about what he complained about since it was not mentioned on either side. Lets do some quick math. The guy actually flew almost 25k miles. If we assume that he flew all shorthaul trips, and earned the minimum of 500 miles on those trips, he would have flown a maximum of 50 times during this timeframe. With over 200 complaints on file, that adds up to at least 4 complaints per flight. Not all of his complaints may be related to the flight. He may have complained about a rude reservation agent, then called back to complain about the person who compensated him for that, then called back to complain about the amount of compensation, etc. Perhaps the underlying complaint was legit, but I doubt if UA treated him that badly. If I were treated so bad where I would have to make 200 phone calls in 6 months, I would have made 1 call to my lawyer and gotten some real $$ out of them. He milked it, plain and simple. UA should have busted him a long time ago. Shame on them. Had he not been so greedy and stopped at 100 calls, they may have never caught him. The fact of the matter is that they should shut this guy down immediately. Whenever there are people milking the airline like this, the airline has to get the money from someone. That someone would be the rest of us. I don’t want to pay for him to fly. Neither should you.
March 8th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Let’s just say that 200 calls does not necessarily equal 200 different complaints. Maybe he had to make 200 calls to get his single terrible experience dealt with in a way he found satisfactory.
Airlines document everything in computers as it happens on phone calls with customers. Especially if they dole out compensation. It’s not as if they have a big stack of vouchers or credits on their desk and he just went around collecting them. Each one had to be electronically credited.
The above from the airline is vague. If they had good details to show they would have shown at least some of them. I’ll assume he did the right thing until they show he did not. Why should I assume he did not?
June 19th, 2009 at 12:24 am
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