Budgets Are Sexy

I’m gonna start this out with 2 quick things here:  1) I officially break up with United Airlines now, and it’s all due to their lack of customer service.  Which is sad, because their actual product of flying people from point a to b is pretty excellent.  When you suck at helping your customers, though, it tends to skew their judgement.

But on a more positive note, which also brings us to #2), I LOVE American Express! :)  Who first TOOK my phone call, with a live human being on the end (miracle!), and then actually DID something when I had a problem. (They’re disputing a charge for me, which United Airlines states is not theirs, even though it literally says “UNITED AIRLINES” on my credit card statement – wtf?)

It took me a total of 15 mins from start to finish to get helped w/ Amex over the 2 HOURS it took w/ United Airlines to NOT help me.  Unless you call “you’ll have to go back to Expedia and ask them why you’re getting charged this $75” being helped? Once I actually got a live person on the phone, of course. Their toll-free number is a landmine of robots, and if it weren’t for my awesome Twitter angels I wouldn’t have known you have to hit ZERO three times in a row to get to a person!  How ridiculous is that? Did you know that they’re even automating reservations by phone now?  It’s crazy…

And don’t get me started on their refund department. They put you through to a voice mail, which then tells you to go online and fill out a form or send them an email. Which I fell for during the first hour of this ordeal.  Want to know how fast they’ll get back to me?  7-10 business days – IF I’m lucky:

“Normally we respond to requests within 7-10 business days. Our volume of refund requests is very high… There is no need to send us another email unless it has been more than 14 business days since your original email and you have not had a response.”

Customer service has gone down the $hit hole, my friends. And it’s not only United Airlines, as we can all attest. I get that companies having to be efficient, but at what expense to the people keeping them in business?  How can you justify pushing someone off for 2-3 weeks when those are the EXACT customers who are pissed off to begin with?  And who’ll then turn around and tell all their friends (and blog readers) just by how much? It really doesn’t make sense to me. And scares me about our future with technology too.

However long I have to put up with these idiots though, I’m not giving up on my hard-earned money.  I don’t care if I have to sit on hold for another 4 hours straight – if you’re gonna dip your hands into my pockets, at least have the courtesy to tell me why you’re doing it.  I don’t mind people accidentally charging me – we all make mistakes – but don’t make it worse and then put up a 101 roadblocks in the way so I can’t even ask you about it. That’s just bad business.

We’ll see what United comes back with once my dogs at Amex sniffs them down… for now, at least, it’s credited :)

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PS: Have you had a run in with United, or another airline, when it came to wrongful charges? How did you end up resolving it?
PPS: More importantly, why don’t companies RESPECT their customers any more?

UPDATE: Forgot to mention, I called Expedia too and they say they have 100% not charged my card for $75. They have no record of it, and only charged me for the flight that they were supposed to have. This $75 came directly after a $25 baggage fee (which was correct, even though that always sucks), so it has to be something on United’s end.
UPDATE #2: Check out this video on United, haha… Don’t go breaking people’s guitars! (Good find Michael C)

(Photo by cliff1066™, labeled by J$)

Originally published at budgetsaresexy.com.