If you follow me on Twitter or are friends with me on Facebook, you probably know by now that I endured the flight delay to end all flight delays on Wednesday. I--along with two of my co-workers--was scheduled to depart Chicago's O'Hare airport at 12 noon. We boarded the plane 30 minutes late, sat on the plane for a couple of hours, and then hauled ourselves and our stuff off the plane for another hour or so in the waiting lounge. Then we reboarded the aircraft and sat on the tarmac for 4 hours. That's two feature-length crappy movies! And, while the flight attendant comped our bad red wine, I was willing to pay top dollar for some Lay's Stax salty snacks--if only they had any on board.At 9:20pm, nearly 9 1/2 hours after our original departure time, United finally took us off the plane for good and canceled our flight.
It sucked, royally. And I used my Blackberry to tweet my growing frustration. I included @UnitedAirlines, the official Twitter ID for United in many of my tweets, and I suspect someone out there was listening, because minutes after my final, frustrated update, I received an email to my personal email address expressing "sincere apologies for the experience you had on Flight 680 on July 29, 2009." Even better, United offered me my choice of make-good gifts. My colleagues, neither of whom made their suffering known to the Twittersphere (is that even a word?), did not receive an email or the promise of a $150 flight credit or 7000 bonus miles.
So there you have it, Twitter-doubters. There's more to micro-blogging than letting people know what you're having for dinner.
7/31/09 @11:02 update: turns out the colleague in First Class, the one who's a super-duper Platinum Double-Plus Rewards Member, also got a credit. A $200 credit. The gal sitting back in Economy with me is furiously penning her letter.
8 comments:
Good for you! And you didn't even have to use the hastag #UnitedHatesBloggers
;-)
I had almost this exact same thing happen once. With United. At O'Hare. But WITH AN INFANT. I ran out of diapers, formula, etc. By the time the flight was taking off, nine hours after original time, we had missed the family funeral that was the reason for the trip, and I couldn't board anyway with no diapers or food for my kid (I had JUST weaned him so there was no insta-food supply). We refused to Board and they had to delay the flight even more to take our bags off the flight. Somehow that made US the bad guys! Oh, United. If only I had been a twitterer back then.
Doesn't it frustrate you though that you were only given an apology/refund once you'd Tweeted something bad? And that those around you who didn't have Twitter were offered nothing at all? I feel like that lessens United's "that's nice" cred. You would think having a refund policy for terrible experiences like this would be part of their business plan to delight customers, not just cover their tracks when someone could spread bad PR about them. What do you think?
It is so cool how social media has given us the power to reach corporations in a real way. No longer are we whiney customers to customer service representatives who could care less! We have real voices to people who really care.
@ruthie I was actually surprised that my co-workers DIDN'T receive an email from United. It took me a couple of hours to figure out that my tweets might have inspired their largess.
So yes, I think United should spread the love around. Southwest Airlines did, of their own accord, 2 years ago and I was so impressed I blogged about it (http://tinyurl.com/n22t8l).
In the meantime, I suggested my colleague write a letter to United customer service.
Ironically, don't you work for the agency that has United as a client?
@ anonymous. Yes, my (very, very large) agency does work for United, but it isn't all that ironic since I don't touch that piece of business...or even know anyone who works on it.
If I was bitching about body wash, THAT would be ironic.
I think it's great that Twitter provides us with this immediate recourse. Used responsibly it's great, and I'm glad it paid off for you. Although I'm with everyone else who says it's a little disappointing that compensation wasn't offered to EVERYONE. Good treatment shouldn't be contingent on a Twitter account, per se.
Cagey about their PR or not, it was smart that someone in the social media group (probably a lackey in the comms dept if I had to guess) paid enough attention to the tweets to give you a refund. We can talk about how bad or good UA's customer service is (I used to have them as a client back in the day), but I think this post was about the power of social media. And there you have it. You got something out of a crappy experience by talking about it.
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