Between my business travel and the fact that the majority of my family is on the East Coast, and I spend a significant time in airports and on airplanes. Coincidentally, I wrote this blog post on an airplane – United Airlines to be precise.

Depending on how you interpreted the title of this post, it could mean one of two things:

I’m either going to write about my most recent flight on United (the I was on when I wrote this post) OR I’m going to write about why I will never fly United Airlines again.

As it turns out, both are true.

If you’ve read this blog for the past few years, you’ll know that I love Southwest Airlines and tend to … how shall I say … NOT love Delta (Read: My Delta Airlines Experience: Where Did All The Humans Go?) and United (Read: Flying is No Longer Fun). Last month I had another less-than-ideal experience with United. Little known fact: It’s impossible to speak to a human being on United’s Customer “Care” team. The only way to contact someone in that department is to fill out the online form. Then, if you are lucky like I was, someone will reply to your questions via email. It only took 3 weeks. Yes, 3 WEEKS (not 3 days or 3 hours). Can you image if your customer service team took 3 weeks to get back to a customer? And even then you could not speak to a real human over the phone. Yikes.

But I digress…

I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details of my latest experience with United, but suffice to say, it was another less-than-ideal situation. The short version is that, 5 minutes before I was supposed to board my flight from SFO to MSP, the gate agent announced that the flight had been canceled. No explanation. No help other than, “Please go to Customer Service for re-accommodation.” After sprinting a quarter mile to the Customer Service desk, the 150 other passengers and I were greeted by a line of 100+. You see, the SFO to ORD flight was also just canceled. Thankfully, I was automatically rebooked on the 1PM flight. The only problem that it was 1PM THE NEXT DAY.

After about an hour on the phone and some luck (again), I was confirmed on a Delta flight that left 6 hours later. My guess is that the majority of the 150 other passengers whose flight to MSP was canceled were not that lucky.

While I’m not proud of this fact, I did complain on the social networks a bit. I posted a few things on my Facebook page, and I shared my frustration on Twitter, mentioning @United.

Reason #42 why I’ll never fly @united ever again. Flight from SFO to Minneapolis CANCELED … 5 min prior to boarding.

— DJ Waldow (@djwaldow) August 15, 2012

However, I didn’t really take it too far as I’ve learned over the years that United tends to only use Twitter for self-promotion and occasionally to respond to positive tweets. That’s certainly their choice, but it doesn’t bode well for customers who need assistance (Remember: Their is no way to speak with a human on the phone at United – webform only!).

(Click image – or here – to see UAL’s most recent tweets)

Why I’m Writing This Blog Post

The goal of this post is not to get United’s attention. I figure this guy already did that [See: UAL breaks guitars] a few years ago. I wish that someone from United would read this and it would help create positive change at the company. Then again, I also hope that someday – once again – you’ll be able to speak to a human being on their Customer Service team. But I’m not holding my breath. United has proven over the years that, as an organization, they don’t care about passengers – the very same people who pay their salaries.

The goal of this post is not to bash individual employees at United. Most of them are just “following the rules,” spitting back United’s corporate policies with apologies such as, “I wish I could do more.” Let me be clear, like most airlines, United has their share of not-so-great employees. However, they also employ some wonderful people – friendly gate agents, flight attendants who care (like the one who served me my Mrs. T’s Bloody Mary Mix – with a lime – on Saturday’s flight), helpful phone support folks and so on. Read this story from Peter Shankman about a great experience a passenger recently had with a United gate agent. Be sure to read the entire post as his final point is one that I could not agree with more.

The bottom list is this: I don’t care what organization you are, when you are as large as United, the chances of every employee being a superstar is nearly impossible.

My hope is that someone from United or from a company who does business with United or from a corporation who books all of its employee travel through United will read this. But not just read it. I hope they’ll read it and be pissed off. I hope they’ll read it and be embarrassed. I hope they’ll read it and say, “This is enough.”

Like I have.

I have no intentions of ever giving United Airlines another penny. I will gladly pay more money and spend more time on another airplane to avoid flying on United. I believe in boycotting with your wallet. But a lost customer, a few thousand dollars a year, and this blog post will not change United. I wish it would have an impact, but I’m not hopeful.

Instead, I think it’s about time big companies stopped doing business with United. Most airlines make their money from business travel. If companies would stop booking their employees on United flights – demanding better service and policies – maybe that would force United to change. If the next Olympics would not make United its “exclusive” airlines, maybe that would create change.

It’s funny. The pre-take off TV announcement on the flight I was on was touting United’s new iPhone app and how easy and convenient it is to use (I agree, by the way). They talked about how they were making improvements to their website too. Awesome. Streamlining the site is a great idea. But you know what I didn’t hear? There was no mention of United’s commitment to improving Customer Service. Not at all.

Unless you are one of a handful of airlines – Southwest, JetBlue, Frontier, Virgin – flying is no longer fun. What I think would go a long way to improving United’s image and the experience for customers (thus resulting in more revenue for United) would be for them to just come out and admit that they’ve dropped the ball with Customer Service. We all know it’s true so why not just own it? Why not throw some significant dollars and resources into making the customer experience out of this world. Is that too much to ask?

My experience has been that customer service across most businesses is getting worse and worse. It didn’t used to be this way. But today, I find that most companies – United included – do not really care about their customers. The bar for “killer” customer service is quite low. In order to stand out, says Peter Shankman, companies should  “focus on treating customers one level above crap.” My version of what Peter says is that you have to be one notch north of suck.

But the more I think about it, low bars and “a notch north of suck” is not enough. We, the customer – the PAYING customer – should demand more (I’m sure Peter Shankman would agree).

Who’s with me?

DJ Waldow
Waldow Social
@djwaldow