8 ms·

Why did United neglect to tell parents of a minor she was rerouted?

173 points by courtneypowell 14y ago

lucian303 14y ago
This is a plain case of kidnapping. I strongly encourage the parents to push for kidnapping and any other charges that may apply here such as child endangerment. United already admitted wrongdoing. Think about it, if you replace United with John Doe in this article, there is no doubt that this was kidnapping. We all want to see justice and justice, in this case, needs to be a very long and hard prison sentence for someone at United. Period.
ukd1 14y ago
Blocking you on twitter was a bad move. Have you got any results since?
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  They have claimed they did not block us but I know for a fact that it was someone on their team and not Twitter.
courtneypowell 14y ago
We went to Twitter and made sure that we were not blocked for a violation of terms and they confirmed we were not and that a user blocked us.
- larrys 14y ago
  Curious what vetting you do of the complaints that you handle this way? What do you do to verify they are valid and not, for example, hoaxes or even if not hoaxes that they contain all of the relevant facts and are not slanted in favor of the harmed person?
  - courtneypowell 14y ago
    I personally reached out to the mother, checked the flight records and reached out to United before sharing anything. We also waited until the child was home safely before sharing anything.
    - larrys 14y ago
      Ok that's good. From a business perspective can you scale that approach? I would imagine it takes a fair amount of effort and time on your part. Are you planning to get community involvement in the vetting process?
    - courtneypowell 14y ago
      Re: the question on scaling. Our system is built to allows companies to simply respond to complaints we automatically share with them via Twitter. We then send the company's response back to the user receive that response via SMS so the conversation can be continued without our involvement, although we retain the conversation data privately on our site. This removes us from the typical dialog we see on the majority of complaints. I only personally get involved when we see something of an emergent nature.
benologist 14y ago
The important thing is they're building a new lounge and smisek wore a hardhat to tell us about it. Where is the line between civil and criminal when it comes to caring for children?
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  It has nothing to do with children, that merely makes the underlying behavior more obvious. It's the difference between treating customers like cattle and like human beings. It's the difference between a company that assumes it is entitled to the business of its customers and one that believes it has to earn it. Sadly there are far too many of the first category.
  - benologist 14y ago
    I don't think it could be that simple when children are involved, there are pretty significant consequences for parents that do a shitty job of caring for them and I assume day care, schools etc have strict regulations.
rscale 14y ago
And with a single click, United loses the goodwill they generated when they delayed a flight so a man could see his dying mother. Bravo, social media team, Bravo.
anti-pattern 14y ago
One more reason I avoid flying them whenever possible.
alayne 14y ago
This reminds me of the issue with Dave Carroll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars. As a company, you can't afford to get yourself in conflicts with people who have genuine issues and are savvy with social media.
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  I agree! I am not sure why they have yet to learn from the past.
JeremyBanks 14y ago
Was this Tweet the only one made @United from the account before it was blocked, or were there others? https://twitter.com/PublikDemand/status/309093527697104898 https://twitter.com/PublikDemand/status/309093527697104898 If that's the only one, that's very surprising. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would spur an instant block, even from an overprotective overzealous social media rep.
- dsl 14y ago
  That tweet looks like a trolling attempt to me. I would have responded and directed them to have the customer contact the company directly and then blocked them.
  - courtneypowell 14y ago
    I would love any suggestions for making tweets look less "spammy". We face that problem daily.
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  They were most likely upset that I called their emergency press line in order to get the mother help. After I gave United the contact information for the mother they refused to talk to me further. They blocked us the next morning.
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    I'm not sure things would go well if we started having third-parties take over all personal business like this. There are lots of things to worry about, and it's double the work for the company.
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  I also tweeted at the from my @CourtneyPowell account on Twitter.
dimadima 14y ago
Not a surprise: a mega-corporation fucking you over. A sad, sad surprise: parents negligent, downright stupid, and naive enough to trust their 11 year old child with a mega-corporation for $150.
kingnight 14y ago
One could swear to never fly United, if one hadn't already done so for American. Airlines have the worst customer service of any industry. Their horror stories are actual horror stories.
- woodchuck64 14y ago
  "Transcontinental Monopoly Airlines, this is Lisa. How may you help us?" Thanks, Berkeley Breathed (http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=84029 http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=84029)
- svachalek 14y ago
  One interesting property of the insurance industry, as I've heard it, is that left to pure capitalistic pressures, companies will charge too little to actually provide the product they are selling. I don't see why that same problem would apply to air travel but it certainly seems to be the case. I know airlines outside the US provide a much more civil experience but I don't know whether they face the same competitive pressures.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    In any perfectly competitive market, prices will be driven down to the marginal cost of the product. This is basic economics. To the extent that companies are able to make a profit, it's because markets aren't perfectly competitive. People identify with brands, large capital investments are often required, regulations have to be overcome, it's illegal to create a product identical to one already being sold, etc. But still, many markets come close enough to cause trouble. Insurance may be one. Airline travel certainly seems to be another one. There's an old joke that the way to make a small fortune in the airline business is to start out with a large fortune. In aggregate, the industry appears to take a loss, long-term, but they manage to keep going through bankruptcy, new entrants, and the occasional government bailout. A lot of non-US airlines are national airlines which are somewhat governmental in nature. They tend to have regulatory advantages and may be outright subsidized by their government. Their motives may be less about making money and more about providing services, showing a good image of their country abroad, and whatever internal bureaucratic motivations they end up with.
kevinpet 14y ago
I'm somewhat surprised that the regulators are not cracking down on these incidents. This is not the first time we've heard of kids being stranded and not getting the chaperone that parents paid for. Refunding the chaperone fee is a bit like choosing to refund the cost of insurance rather than pay a claim -- the fee is far more expensive than the usual value of the services, and it's only paid to protected against unusual situations like a flight rerouted. This is a bit like a hosting company offering a 24/7 support hotline for a monthly fee but never staffing it, and only refunding it when people complain after failing to get through to the support hotline.
- cmiles74 14y ago
  Here's the HN thread on an earlier, equally egregious error on the part of United. This one also involves United taking money for their chaperone service and then failing to follow through. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379599
paulsutter 14y ago
Airlines need to start charging enough for their child chaperone service to operate it with the level of care and communication required. $150 seems low for a high touch personal service with brand/life-threatening failure modes.
- thedragon4453 14y ago
  $150 isn't enough to make sure the kid gets to their connection or someone calls the parents when something goes wrong?
  - pavel_lishin 14y ago
    All the facts so far seem to point to that conclusion.
    - thedragon4453 14y ago
      I disagree. I think that there are probably no more than 5 kids flying by themselves on any given flight. I'm not even expecting a 1:1 ratio - I expect that for those 5 kids, there is maybe 1 person in charge of them. Those 5 kids are generating $750 in revenue. The expense for a chaperon is whatever a seat costs, plus that employee's expenses. I'm going to guess that they make a profit on the service (not to mention I'm doubting there is a special "kid rate" for a seat). Now the problem comes when they start cutting costs. The flight attendant, who used to probably be a well paid, skilled employee who was serving 50 seats is probably a paid less, shorter term employee now serving 75 seats. And instead of having a dedicated chaperon, it's probably now just one of those flight attendants. That they can't deliver for the price they charge doesn't mean the price is wrong. If you buy a car and drive it off the lot and the wheels fall off, you don't say "well, I guess they should have charged me more." Granted, there is a "too good to be true" factor, but I don't think that $150 to make sure that a kid makes their connection and picks up the baggage is more than enough. Honestly, I'd expect that as part of the ticket price.
      - pavel_lishin 14y ago
javajosh 14y ago
I propose a solution to this and all related problems. It is a law that every legal entity in the United States must maintain a public, permanent record of any and all complaints against it. They may choose to publish individual responses, but this is not required. This would solve the problem of aggregating complaints. The first line of defense of a large entity is information asymmetry: they isolate the customer, make them feel like their problem is unique, or that it's no big deal, no-one else cares, etc. In this case, United (correctly) realized that PublikDemand's twitter account was successfully serving as a de facto complaint database, and acted to remove it. Knowledge of other customer's complaints is a powerful weapon for any customer with a problem. It tells them that they are not alone, that the company has a problem, and opens the possibility of combining forces to take action against the company: the cost-burden of legal action against the company can be shared between plaintiffs, a kind of psuedo class action suit. As it stands, only the most sensational horror stories are seen, and they are not reported in a way that is easily searchable or usable for the next customer that is abused and whose abuse is buried by information asymmetry.
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  This is a difficult problem to solve, one that we have been working on for a while at PublikDemand. We have hoards of people with the same complaint against a company and are trying how to best unite them and allow them use the collective voice to demand change.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    The problem is that the correct place to collect and disseminate these complaints is at the problem point - and the problem entity has the least interest in maintaining the information. This is actually a really big problem.
- rm999 14y ago
  I'd be concerned about complaint spam, which could quickly devalue a system like that. A small number of legitimate complaints (like in this story) could be drowned out by thousands of pointless/fake complaints. See, for example, this story: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/12/4442-2/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/12/4442-2/ >You may have also heard that in recent years complaints about TV have gone through the roof, from a mere 350 complaints in 2000 to a whopping 240,000 in 2003, and potentially even more this year ... The problem is that, unfortunately, these massive numbers all boil down to one politically motivated group with an axe to grind. I'm sure there are ways to make it more difficult to file a complaint, but that just leads to bureaucracy. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the system would have to be executed very well or every airline will have a few million complaints that are impossible to search through.
pud 14y ago
Part of me feels bad for United here. They're bound to make some mistakes when flying millions of people around the planet every day. But thanks to social media, all it takes is one of those mistakes to turn into a viral blog post -- and now you've got a PR crisis. Not defending United or saying they didn't screw up. They did. But dang it, as an entrepreneur, that business seems really f'ing complex and I feel for them.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  I feel bad for the person who's going to have to defend United as a company. I don't feel as bad for the several people who are going to get fired over this.
- petenixey 14y ago
  It is a complex business but this error wasn't caused by complexity. It was caused by a combination of dreadful management, low quality standards and bad reporting. There are so many examples of people being badly treated by United that as awful as this story is, it's probably also acting as a nucleation point for the general anger and disappointment they have created. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars
  - 3327 14y ago
    agree, I flew with United this past month, long story short, my boarding pass got confiscated by ground crew, when I claimed i wasn't happy with their service for another matter, and only when I threatened with calling the police was it given back to me at the gate. I wrote to customer service but canned response was the best I got. Never flying them again. US airline industry needs a serious disruptions - end of story. Look at IRR on these companies, they have been relative disasters for investors. Most should have gone under a while ago... Too big to fail I guess...
    - rogerbinns 14y ago
      Also don't forget that foreigners can't come in and shake things up either due to protectionism enforced by law. In the land of the free, this sort of nonsense happens a lot. For example car dealerships are also protected by protectionist laws. In most locations you couldn't open a hospital that saves people money due to certificate of need regulations that mean you can't reduce the profitability of existing hospitals!
elliptic 14y ago
And now Continental's just as bad. Almost makes me want to move to Singapore.
- Adaptive 14y ago
  Upvote. Singapore would probably drive me mad eventually, but there really is nothing like flying into that airport. My wife and I regularly argue whether SIN or HKG is superior. Our conversation on entering the arrival hall is always the same: "maybe we should move back..."
brentledent 14y ago
This sounds much like my family's experience with United as well. I will never patronize them again in my life. Blocking on Twitter is taking it to a whole new level.
venus 14y ago
What is this hysterical nonsense? Fine, UA should have called the mother to let her know what was going on. Someone screwed up. But they obviously went to a lot of effort to take care of the kid, putting her up in a hotel to wait for the next flight, with a UA employee of the same sex chaperoning her. The case was seized upon by what appears to be a professionally outraged busybody trying to "monetize" shrill complaints against big companies, and they get banned. So what? I am no fan of UA but this is a storm in a teacup. The mother should just chill out, and "PublikDemand" should learn that a kid not talking to her mother for a couple of hours does not constitute a national emergency. edit: Just read the "complaint". http://www.publikdemand.com/blog/letter-to-united-ceo-jeff-smisek-why-did-united-neglect-to-tell-parents-of-a-minor-she-was-rerouted-and-leave-her-in-an-airport-for-ten-hours/ http://www.publikdemand.com/blog/letter-to-united-ceo-jeff-s... I feel sorry for the kid, yes - because of her irrationally overprotective mother. And the exaggerations amount to lies in my book - at no point was the child "stranded", nor made to stay with an actual stranger. One wonders, if "strangers" are so inherently evil, what the mother was doing sending her precious little angel onto an entire plane full of strangers. Stranding her on the plane, even! Yeah, UA could have done better, but it's not like the kid is dead, for fuck's sake. Can we have some perspective please?
- cmiles74 14y ago
  I couldn't find this bit about the airport and the same-sex chaperone in the article... The only relevant bit was: "The little girl ended up staying ten hours, overnight, at the Denver International Airport before being rerouted through Houston." Did they in fact put the child in a hotel with a chaperon? That might sway my opinion a bit.
  - venus 14y ago
    Down the bottom of http://www.publikdemand.com/united/ckmnaguilar08/my-daughter-is-staying-with-a-stranger-due-to-united-airlines-and-I-wasnt-notified/?ttsh=avmf2V http://www.publikdemand.com/united/ckmnaguilar08/my-daughter...
- dsl 14y ago
  PublikDemand leaves the same sort of taste in my mouth as GetSatisfaction. They build a 3rd party forum for users to try and resolve issues, then people get outraged when the company doesn't jump on the new communication method. IMHO, United shouldn't be discussing a customers business with PublikDemand anyway. Just like I can't call up American Express and ask them why they haven't raised your credit limit.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
hamburglar 14y ago
This sucks and United should really get a bunch of bad PR over it, but the real message that I'm taking away is: don't trust a %$&*#! airline company with your kids. I barely trust them with my suitcase.
umsm 14y ago
I feel like this is the norm with airlines these days. They're saving pennies, pushing customers around, delaying almost every flight... It's hard to justify flying for small trips.
ajasmin 14y ago
This is more worrying than the typical HN post about having to turn off an electronic gadget on the plane. I'm not necessarily saying that United did something wrong though. Planes can have mechanical issues and there are a bunch of reasons why the mother may not have been contacted in time. But not knowing where your child is should definitely get more attention than the typical "they told me to turn off my iPhone" kind of complaint.
trimbo 14y ago
Why post it to a blog? I mailed Jeff Smisek directly l about a problem I had at SFO and he responded in two minutes. On a Saturday.
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  I emailed him directly to after someone sent me his email address a few minutes ago, and their SVP of Customer Experience.
shrikant 14y ago
All this reminds me of when I used to fly internationally as an "Unaccompanied Minor" in the early 90s. This clusterfuck would NEVER have happened back then (at least never happened to me..) -- kids travelling alone were treated like royalty. I'd randomly get bumped up to First Class, be able to use the nice lounges in airports, and got put up in really nice hotels when flights were delayed too long. All this amidst a constant stream of little delights (candy, toys, snacks, compliments from the stewardesses for being well-behaved). Ah, those were the days! /end curmudgeonly old fart mode.
- Andrenid 14y ago
  Yeah I used to travel from 10yrs-14yrs alone, back/forth EU<->AU 4 times a year return. I had the same treatment. Random bumps up to higher class seats, driven from gate to gate on those electric carts when I needed to do a transfer, accompanied by hostesses every minute I wasn't on the plane, etc etc. The idea of them ignoring/abandoning a kid would've been met with riots back then.
- girvo 14y ago
  I used to do the same, flew as a UM once a year. So much fun :)
- sukuriant 14y ago
  You mean you were treated in such a way that it was always known where you were so these sorts of things couldn't happen? (hey! He's playing with his toys in the lounge! I can HEAR the gameboy and him clicking on it; and oh, I'll go give him another treat so I know for sure he's there every few minutes!) Yeah, they were checking on you every time they brought snacks and toys, and doing their best to keep you entertained so you didn't do bad things. And that is what they should be doing: watching out for you.
- ColinWright 14y ago
  If you were flying as an unaccompanied minor in the early 90s you are not a curmudgeonly old fart. Get off my lawn!
- ajross 14y ago
courtneypowell 14y ago
UPDATE: I was able to email Jeff Smisek and the SVP of Customer Experience directly a moment ago. I will post their response publicly if I hear back.
ryanmarsh 14y ago
My client is their biggest US competitor. I've seen operations across many business units and can say, sadly this does not surprise me at all. The employees I spoke with told me that the other airlines they've worked at are similar. The employees generally, across this particular company are generally very angry, feel screwed by their employer and simply don't care.
jowiar 14y ago
From http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/specialneeds/minors/faq.aspx http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/specialneeds/... What if my child’s travel is affected by delays, cancellations or other problems? It can be very stressful when flights do not operate as planned, especially for unaccompanied children. In the case of weather or other delays and cancellations, United will contact you or the person designated to meet your child at his or her final destination. You can also track the status of the flight on united.com. Advise your child to remain with a United representative at all times. Consider giving your child a calling card or teaching him or her how to make collect calls so he or she can reach you. In short, someone at United screwed up. The chaperone didn't call. That's bad, and they need to investigate whether this was a one-off or systematic screw-up. That said, flying from Great Falls to Nashville (which is already hairy due to the small regional airports on either end of the journey) on a day where there's a major winter storm forecast to slam the midwest. This including a foot of snow on Chicago, which ruins United's system for the day (is this not a well known fact)? If you don't want to entertain the possibility that your child might be stranded without you? Fly yourself to Great Falls, meet your child, and fly back together. Alternatively, driving to Atlanta or Memphis will up your odds considerably of a successful venture. Instead of sending her on the next flight to Nashville, they have routed her across the country on three connections and is staying overnight in Houston with a complete stranger! United probably thought there was a pretty good chance "the next flight to Nashville" wouldn't exist (It was delayed 5 hours, arriving in Nashville at 2am). This doesn't excuse United's behavior, but Ms. Neff-Aguilar could have prepared better.
- mikeash 14y ago
  Your proposal to plan better would make more sense if airline travel didn't require an order of magnitude or two more advance planning than weather forecasts can provide.
  - jowiar 14y ago
    Getting stranded is a fact of life when flying. Especially during winter. Especially with connections. Especially when flying to airports with very few flights where one missed connection breaks everything. If, going into the trip, the possibility of her daughter being somewhere overnight was unconscionable, Ms. Neff-Aguilar could have originally planned to meet her daughter in Montana and travel home together. Or compensate a family member / friend in Montana to accompany her to Nashville.
pheleven 14y ago
My sister (several years ago) was flying United solo (minor, 17, first solo flight) from CA to ME, connecting in LGA. Her flight came in late and she missed the connecting flight (late at night). There were no United employees on staff (at all!) in LGA at that hour. My mom spent several hours trying to get someone at United to help her out and they couldn't get ahold of their "on call" staff member to assist her. They ended up telling her to "sleep on a bench" and wait till the staff came in some 4-5 hours later in the morning and someone could get her set up with a new connecting flight. They eventually offered a $150 coupon for her "next" flight, which will never happen.
trotsky 14y ago
Is there any market sizing or business intelligence data available for the manufactured internet controversy industry? It seems to be booming.
ixacto 14y ago
I flew united this week, and had zero problems. The TSA on the other hand...
mindcrime 14y ago
Not necessarily related to this incident, but United really have become my least favorite airline in many ways. There's just something about dealing with them that constantly leaves me with this weird feeling, like nobody there knows what the f%!# is going on. When I've had flights delayed with other airlines, the process has at least felt organized, and while the delay was annoying, it never felt like a total clusterfuck. OTOH, with United, it seems like every time there is a delay, things get, well, weird. There will be 3 or 4 gate changes; airport monitors with information that doesn't match what is on my phone via their mobile app, neither of which matches the screen behind the gate agent stand; gate agents who seem totally clueless and so on. At times, when I fly United, I wonder if I'm ever actually going to get where I'm going at all. American, Southwest and Delta all seem to do a much better job of organizing things, from what I can see. The only thing United really has going for them is Economy Plus seating, and American is adding a similar feature. Honestly, I try to avoid United these days.
- paulyg 14y ago
  US Air is like this as well. Always in a state of chaos. They are infamous for losing bags. I live in a US Air hub city and still avoid them at all costs.
RougeFemme 14y ago
"As a result, no one has ownership of the minor." Maybe no one by name has ownership, but someone by role has ownership. So whoever is filling the role for the airline/airport at that time/on that flight/for that airline at that airport (however the process is defined) has ownership. So there is an individual with ownership at all times. I agree though, that training may be sorely lacking for those situations that are exceptions to the normal process. None of that changes the fact that ultimately, the airline has ownership.

173 points by courtneypowell 14y ago

This is a plain case of kidnapping. I strongly encourage the parents to push for kidnapping and any other charges that may apply here such as child endangerment. United already admitted wrongdoing. Think about it, if you replace United with John Doe in this article, there is no doubt that this was kidnapping. We all want to see justice and justice, in this case, needs to be a very long and hard prison sentence for someone at United. Period.

ukd1 14y ago

Blocking you on twitter was a bad move. Have you got any results since?

courtneypowell 14y ago
They have claimed they did not block us but I know for a fact that it was someone on their team and not Twitter.

courtneypowell 14y ago

We went to Twitter and made sure that we were not blocked for a violation of terms and they confirmed we were not and that a user blocked us.

larrys 14y ago
Curious what vetting you do of the complaints that you handle this way? What do you do to verify they are valid and not, for example, hoaxes or even if not hoaxes that they contain all of the relevant facts and are not slanted in favor of the harmed person?
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  I personally reached out to the mother, checked the flight records and reached out to United before sharing anything. We also waited until the child was home safely before sharing anything.
  - larrys 14y ago
    Ok that's good. From a business perspective can you scale that approach? I would imagine it takes a fair amount of effort and time on your part. Are you planning to get community involvement in the vetting process?
  - courtneypowell 14y ago
    Re: the question on scaling. Our system is built to allows companies to simply respond to complaints we automatically share with them via Twitter. We then send the company's response back to the user receive that response via SMS so the conversation can be continued without our involvement, although we retain the conversation data privately on our site. This removes us from the typical dialog we see on the majority of complaints. I only personally get involved when we see something of an emergent nature.

benologist 14y ago

The important thing is they're building a new lounge and smisek wore a hardhat to tell us about it. Where is the line between civil and criminal when it comes to caring for children?

InclinedPlane 14y ago
It has nothing to do with children, that merely makes the underlying behavior more obvious. It's the difference between treating customers like cattle and like human beings. It's the difference between a company that assumes it is entitled to the business of its customers and one that believes it has to earn it. Sadly there are far too many of the first category.
- benologist 14y ago
  I don't think it could be that simple when children are involved, there are pretty significant consequences for parents that do a shitty job of caring for them and I assume day care, schools etc have strict regulations.

rscale 14y ago

And with a single click, United loses the goodwill they generated when they delayed a flight so a man could see his dying mother. Bravo, social media team, Bravo.

anti-pattern 14y ago

One more reason I avoid flying them whenever possible.

alayne 14y ago

This reminds me of the issue with Dave Carroll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars. As a company, you can't afford to get yourself in conflicts with people who have genuine issues and are savvy with social media.

courtneypowell 14y ago
I agree! I am not sure why they have yet to learn from the past.

JeremyBanks 14y ago

Was this Tweet the only one made @United from the account before it was blocked, or were there others? https://twitter.com/PublikDemand/status/309093527697104898 https://twitter.com/PublikDemand/status/309093527697104898 If that's the only one, that's very surprising. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would spur an instant block, even from an overprotective overzealous social media rep.

dsl 14y ago
That tweet looks like a trolling attempt to me. I would have responded and directed them to have the customer contact the company directly and then blocked them.
- courtneypowell 14y ago
  I would love any suggestions for making tweets look less "spammy". We face that problem daily.
courtneypowell 14y ago
They were most likely upset that I called their emergency press line in order to get the mother help. After I gave United the contact information for the mother they refused to talk to me further. They blocked us the next morning.
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  I'm not sure things would go well if we started having third-parties take over all personal business like this. There are lots of things to worry about, and it's double the work for the company.
courtneypowell 14y ago
I also tweeted at the from my @CourtneyPowell account on Twitter.

dimadima 14y ago

Not a surprise: a mega-corporation fucking you over. A sad, sad surprise: parents negligent, downright stupid, and naive enough to trust their 11 year old child with a mega-corporation for $150.

kingnight 14y ago

One could swear to never fly United, if one hadn't already done so for American. Airlines have the worst customer service of any industry. Their horror stories are actual horror stories.

woodchuck64 14y ago
"Transcontinental Monopoly Airlines, this is Lisa. How may you help us?" Thanks, Berkeley Breathed (http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=84029 http://www.thecomicstrips.com/store/add_strip.php?iid=84029)
svachalek 14y ago
One interesting property of the insurance industry, as I've heard it, is that left to pure capitalistic pressures, companies will charge too little to actually provide the product they are selling. I don't see why that same problem would apply to air travel but it certainly seems to be the case. I know airlines outside the US provide a much more civil experience but I don't know whether they face the same competitive pressures.
- mikeash 14y ago
  In any perfectly competitive market, prices will be driven down to the marginal cost of the product. This is basic economics. To the extent that companies are able to make a profit, it's because markets aren't perfectly competitive. People identify with brands, large capital investments are often required, regulations have to be overcome, it's illegal to create a product identical to one already being sold, etc. But still, many markets come close enough to cause trouble. Insurance may be one. Airline travel certainly seems to be another one. There's an old joke that the way to make a small fortune in the airline business is to start out with a large fortune. In aggregate, the industry appears to take a loss, long-term, but they manage to keep going through bankruptcy, new entrants, and the occasional government bailout. A lot of non-US airlines are national airlines which are somewhat governmental in nature. They tend to have regulatory advantages and may be outright subsidized by their government. Their motives may be less about making money and more about providing services, showing a good image of their country abroad, and whatever internal bureaucratic motivations they end up with.

kevinpet 14y ago

I'm somewhat surprised that the regulators are not cracking down on these incidents. This is not the first time we've heard of kids being stranded and not getting the chaperone that parents paid for. Refunding the chaperone fee is a bit like choosing to refund the cost of insurance rather than pay a claim -- the fee is far more expensive than the usual value of the services, and it's only paid to protected against unusual situations like a flight rerouted. This is a bit like a hosting company offering a 24/7 support hotline for a monthly fee but never staffing it, and only refunding it when people complain after failing to get through to the support hotline.

cmiles74 14y ago
Here's the HN thread on an earlier, equally egregious error on the part of United. This one also involves United taking money for their chaperone service and then failing to follow through. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379599

paulsutter 14y ago

Airlines need to start charging enough for their child chaperone service to operate it with the level of care and communication required. $150 seems low for a high touch personal service with brand/life-threatening failure modes.

thedragon4453 14y ago
$150 isn't enough to make sure the kid gets to their connection or someone calls the parents when something goes wrong?
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  All the facts so far seem to point to that conclusion.
  - thedragon4453 14y ago
    I disagree. I think that there are probably no more than 5 kids flying by themselves on any given flight. I'm not even expecting a 1:1 ratio - I expect that for those 5 kids, there is maybe 1 person in charge of them. Those 5 kids are generating $750 in revenue. The expense for a chaperon is whatever a seat costs, plus that employee's expenses. I'm going to guess that they make a profit on the service (not to mention I'm doubting there is a special "kid rate" for a seat). Now the problem comes when they start cutting costs. The flight attendant, who used to probably be a well paid, skilled employee who was serving 50 seats is probably a paid less, shorter term employee now serving 75 seats. And instead of having a dedicated chaperon, it's probably now just one of those flight attendants. That they can't deliver for the price they charge doesn't mean the price is wrong. If you buy a car and drive it off the lot and the wheels fall off, you don't say "well, I guess they should have charged me more." Granted, there is a "too good to be true" factor, but I don't think that $150 to make sure that a kid makes their connection and picks up the baggage is more than enough. Honestly, I'd expect that as part of the ticket price.
    - pavel_lishin 14y ago

javajosh 14y ago

I propose a solution to this and all related problems. It is a law that every legal entity in the United States must maintain a public, permanent record of any and all complaints against it. They may choose to publish individual responses, but this is not required. This would solve the problem of aggregating complaints. The first line of defense of a large entity is information asymmetry: they isolate the customer, make them feel like their problem is unique, or that it's no big deal, no-one else cares, etc. In this case, United (correctly) realized that PublikDemand's twitter account was successfully serving as a de facto complaint database, and acted to remove it. Knowledge of other customer's complaints is a powerful weapon for any customer with a problem. It tells them that they are not alone, that the company has a problem, and opens the possibility of combining forces to take action against the company: the cost-burden of legal action against the company can be shared between plaintiffs, a kind of psuedo class action suit. As it stands, only the most sensational horror stories are seen, and they are not reported in a way that is easily searchable or usable for the next customer that is abused and whose abuse is buried by information asymmetry.

courtneypowell 14y ago
This is a difficult problem to solve, one that we have been working on for a while at PublikDemand. We have hoards of people with the same complaint against a company and are trying how to best unite them and allow them use the collective voice to demand change.
- javajosh 14y ago
  The problem is that the correct place to collect and disseminate these complaints is at the problem point - and the problem entity has the least interest in maintaining the information. This is actually a really big problem.
rm999 14y ago
I'd be concerned about complaint spam, which could quickly devalue a system like that. A small number of legitimate complaints (like in this story) could be drowned out by thousands of pointless/fake complaints. See, for example, this story: http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/12/4442-2/ http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2004/12/4442-2/ >You may have also heard that in recent years complaints about TV have gone through the roof, from a mere 350 complaints in 2000 to a whopping 240,000 in 2003, and potentially even more this year ... The problem is that, unfortunately, these massive numbers all boil down to one politically motivated group with an axe to grind. I'm sure there are ways to make it more difficult to file a complaint, but that just leads to bureaucracy. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the system would have to be executed very well or every airline will have a few million complaints that are impossible to search through.

pud 14y ago

Part of me feels bad for United here. They're bound to make some mistakes when flying millions of people around the planet every day. But thanks to social media, all it takes is one of those mistakes to turn into a viral blog post -- and now you've got a PR crisis. Not defending United or saying they didn't screw up. They did. But dang it, as an entrepreneur, that business seems really f'ing complex and I feel for them.

pavel_lishin 14y ago
I feel bad for the person who's going to have to defend United as a company. I don't feel as bad for the several people who are going to get fired over this.
petenixey 14y ago
It is a complex business but this error wasn't caused by complexity. It was caused by a combination of dreadful management, low quality standards and bad reporting. There are so many examples of people being badly treated by United that as awful as this story is, it's probably also acting as a nucleation point for the general anger and disappointment they have created. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Breaks_Guitars
- 3327 14y ago
  agree, I flew with United this past month, long story short, my boarding pass got confiscated by ground crew, when I claimed i wasn't happy with their service for another matter, and only when I threatened with calling the police was it given back to me at the gate. I wrote to customer service but canned response was the best I got. Never flying them again. US airline industry needs a serious disruptions - end of story. Look at IRR on these companies, they have been relative disasters for investors. Most should have gone under a while ago... Too big to fail I guess...
  - rogerbinns 14y ago
    Also don't forget that foreigners can't come in and shake things up either due to protectionism enforced by law. In the land of the free, this sort of nonsense happens a lot. For example car dealerships are also protected by protectionist laws. In most locations you couldn't open a hospital that saves people money due to certificate of need regulations that mean you can't reduce the profitability of existing hospitals!

elliptic 14y ago

And now Continental's just as bad. Almost makes me want to move to Singapore.

Adaptive 14y ago
Upvote. Singapore would probably drive me mad eventually, but there really is nothing like flying into that airport. My wife and I regularly argue whether SIN or HKG is superior. Our conversation on entering the arrival hall is always the same: "maybe we should move back..."

brentledent 14y ago

This sounds much like my family's experience with United as well. I will never patronize them again in my life. Blocking on Twitter is taking it to a whole new level.

venus 14y ago

What is this hysterical nonsense? Fine, UA should have called the mother to let her know what was going on. Someone screwed up. But they obviously went to a lot of effort to take care of the kid, putting her up in a hotel to wait for the next flight, with a UA employee of the same sex chaperoning her. The case was seized upon by what appears to be a professionally outraged busybody trying to "monetize" shrill complaints against big companies, and they get banned. So what? I am no fan of UA but this is a storm in a teacup. The mother should just chill out, and "PublikDemand" should learn that a kid not talking to her mother for a couple of hours does not constitute a national emergency. edit: Just read the "complaint". http://www.publikdemand.com/blog/letter-to-united-ceo-jeff-smisek-why-did-united-neglect-to-tell-parents-of-a-minor-she-was-rerouted-and-leave-her-in-an-airport-for-ten-hours/ http://www.publikdemand.com/blog/letter-to-united-ceo-jeff-s... I feel sorry for the kid, yes - because of her irrationally overprotective mother. And the exaggerations amount to lies in my book - at no point was the child "stranded", nor made to stay with an actual stranger. One wonders, if "strangers" are so inherently evil, what the mother was doing sending her precious little angel onto an entire plane full of strangers. Stranding her on the plane, even! Yeah, UA could have done better, but it's not like the kid is dead, for fuck's sake. Can we have some perspective please?

cmiles74 14y ago
I couldn't find this bit about the airport and the same-sex chaperone in the article... The only relevant bit was: "The little girl ended up staying ten hours, overnight, at the Denver International Airport before being rerouted through Houston." Did they in fact put the child in a hotel with a chaperon? That might sway my opinion a bit.
- venus 14y ago
  Down the bottom of http://www.publikdemand.com/united/ckmnaguilar08/my-daughter-is-staying-with-a-stranger-due-to-united-airlines-and-I-wasnt-notified/?ttsh=avmf2V http://www.publikdemand.com/united/ckmnaguilar08/my-daughter...
dsl 14y ago
PublikDemand leaves the same sort of taste in my mouth as GetSatisfaction. They build a 3rd party forum for users to try and resolve issues, then people get outraged when the company doesn't jump on the new communication method. IMHO, United shouldn't be discussing a customers business with PublikDemand anyway. Just like I can't call up American Express and ask them why they haven't raised your credit limit.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

hamburglar 14y ago

This sucks and United should really get a bunch of bad PR over it, but the real message that I'm taking away is: don't trust a %$&*#! airline company with your kids. I barely trust them with my suitcase.

umsm 14y ago

I feel like this is the norm with airlines these days. They're saving pennies, pushing customers around, delaying almost every flight... It's hard to justify flying for small trips.

ajasmin 14y ago

This is more worrying than the typical HN post about having to turn off an electronic gadget on the plane. I'm not necessarily saying that United did something wrong though. Planes can have mechanical issues and there are a bunch of reasons why the mother may not have been contacted in time. But not knowing where your child is should definitely get more attention than the typical "they told me to turn off my iPhone" kind of complaint.

trimbo 14y ago

Why post it to a blog? I mailed Jeff Smisek directly l about a problem I had at SFO and he responded in two minutes. On a Saturday.

courtneypowell 14y ago
I emailed him directly to after someone sent me his email address a few minutes ago, and their SVP of Customer Experience.

shrikant 14y ago

All this reminds me of when I used to fly internationally as an "Unaccompanied Minor" in the early 90s. This clusterfuck would NEVER have happened back then (at least never happened to me..) -- kids travelling alone were treated like royalty. I'd randomly get bumped up to First Class, be able to use the nice lounges in airports, and got put up in really nice hotels when flights were delayed too long. All this amidst a constant stream of little delights (candy, toys, snacks, compliments from the stewardesses for being well-behaved). Ah, those were the days! /end curmudgeonly old fart mode.

Andrenid 14y ago
Yeah I used to travel from 10yrs-14yrs alone, back/forth EU<->AU 4 times a year return. I had the same treatment. Random bumps up to higher class seats, driven from gate to gate on those electric carts when I needed to do a transfer, accompanied by hostesses every minute I wasn't on the plane, etc etc. The idea of them ignoring/abandoning a kid would've been met with riots back then.
girvo 14y ago
I used to do the same, flew as a UM once a year. So much fun :)
sukuriant 14y ago
You mean you were treated in such a way that it was always known where you were so these sorts of things couldn't happen? (hey! He's playing with his toys in the lounge! I can HEAR the gameboy and him clicking on it; and oh, I'll go give him another treat so I know for sure he's there every few minutes!) Yeah, they were checking on you every time they brought snacks and toys, and doing their best to keep you entertained so you didn't do bad things. And that is what they should be doing: watching out for you.
ColinWright 14y ago
If you were flying as an unaccompanied minor in the early 90s you are not a curmudgeonly old fart. Get off my lawn!
ajross 14y ago

courtneypowell 14y ago

UPDATE: I was able to email Jeff Smisek and the SVP of Customer Experience directly a moment ago. I will post their response publicly if I hear back.

ryanmarsh 14y ago

My client is their biggest US competitor. I've seen operations across many business units and can say, sadly this does not surprise me at all. The employees I spoke with told me that the other airlines they've worked at are similar. The employees generally, across this particular company are generally very angry, feel screwed by their employer and simply don't care.

jowiar 14y ago

From http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/specialneeds/minors/faq.aspx http://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/travel/specialneeds/... What if my child’s travel is affected by delays, cancellations or other problems? It can be very stressful when flights do not operate as planned, especially for unaccompanied children. In the case of weather or other delays and cancellations, United will contact you or the person designated to meet your child at his or her final destination. You can also track the status of the flight on united.com. Advise your child to remain with a United representative at all times. Consider giving your child a calling card or teaching him or her how to make collect calls so he or she can reach you. In short, someone at United screwed up. The chaperone didn't call. That's bad, and they need to investigate whether this was a one-off or systematic screw-up. That said, flying from Great Falls to Nashville (which is already hairy due to the small regional airports on either end of the journey) on a day where there's a major winter storm forecast to slam the midwest. This including a foot of snow on Chicago, which ruins United's system for the day (is this not a well known fact)? If you don't want to entertain the possibility that your child might be stranded without you? Fly yourself to Great Falls, meet your child, and fly back together. Alternatively, driving to Atlanta or Memphis will up your odds considerably of a successful venture. Instead of sending her on the next flight to Nashville, they have routed her across the country on three connections and is staying overnight in Houston with a complete stranger! United probably thought there was a pretty good chance "the next flight to Nashville" wouldn't exist (It was delayed 5 hours, arriving in Nashville at 2am). This doesn't excuse United's behavior, but Ms. Neff-Aguilar could have prepared better.

mikeash 14y ago
Your proposal to plan better would make more sense if airline travel didn't require an order of magnitude or two more advance planning than weather forecasts can provide.
- jowiar 14y ago
  Getting stranded is a fact of life when flying. Especially during winter. Especially with connections. Especially when flying to airports with very few flights where one missed connection breaks everything. If, going into the trip, the possibility of her daughter being somewhere overnight was unconscionable, Ms. Neff-Aguilar could have originally planned to meet her daughter in Montana and travel home together. Or compensate a family member / friend in Montana to accompany her to Nashville.

pheleven 14y ago

My sister (several years ago) was flying United solo (minor, 17, first solo flight) from CA to ME, connecting in LGA. Her flight came in late and she missed the connecting flight (late at night). There were no United employees on staff (at all!) in LGA at that hour. My mom spent several hours trying to get someone at United to help her out and they couldn't get ahold of their "on call" staff member to assist her. They ended up telling her to "sleep on a bench" and wait till the staff came in some 4-5 hours later in the morning and someone could get her set up with a new connecting flight. They eventually offered a $150 coupon for her "next" flight, which will never happen.

trotsky 14y ago

Is there any market sizing or business intelligence data available for the manufactured internet controversy industry? It seems to be booming.

ixacto 14y ago

I flew united this week, and had zero problems. The TSA on the other hand...

mindcrime 14y ago

Not necessarily related to this incident, but United really have become my least favorite airline in many ways. There's just something about dealing with them that constantly leaves me with this weird feeling, like nobody there knows what the f%!# is going on. When I've had flights delayed with other airlines, the process has at least felt organized, and while the delay was annoying, it never felt like a total clusterfuck. OTOH, with United, it seems like every time there is a delay, things get, well, weird. There will be 3 or 4 gate changes; airport monitors with information that doesn't match what is on my phone via their mobile app, neither of which matches the screen behind the gate agent stand; gate agents who seem totally clueless and so on. At times, when I fly United, I wonder if I'm ever actually going to get where I'm going at all. American, Southwest and Delta all seem to do a much better job of organizing things, from what I can see. The only thing United really has going for them is Economy Plus seating, and American is adding a similar feature. Honestly, I try to avoid United these days.

paulyg 14y ago
US Air is like this as well. Always in a state of chaos. They are infamous for losing bags. I live in a US Air hub city and still avoid them at all costs.

RougeFemme 14y ago

"As a result, no one has ownership of the minor." Maybe no one by name has ownership, but someone by role has ownership. So whoever is filling the role for the airline/airport at that time/on that flight/for that airline at that airport (however the process is defined) has ownership. So there is an individual with ownership at all times. I agree though, that training may be sorely lacking for those situations that are exceptions to the normal process. None of that changes the fact that ultimately, the airline has ownership.