I recently flew United from Ohare to Newark and boy this was the worst flight ever. As a disclaimer, I have always been a customer of United – I have had the same mileage visa for 6+ years now and have accumulated around 200K miles just on purchases alone and limited travel. It is usually my first airline of choice unless I get a “really” good price on some other airline. But my last United flight was just painful..for lack of better word.
It first started off at Ohare. I had to carry a large luggage this time to move some stuff and I knew it was going to be overweight. Having recently flown AA with a similar overweight bag, I expected a 25$ baggage fee for a 20 pounds over max weight. But they were charging 50$ for anything over 50lbs and below 99lbs and I had mine at 68lbs. Anyway, after a little arguing with an un-interested United worker at the terminal, I spoke with the manager and quite frankly they did not care about AA’s policy. So I succumbed and paid the 50 bucks. While the flight was much of a non-event, it was when I landed that I realized that my bag did not even make it to Newark and was still in Chicago.
I filled the standard claim form and went home to Jersey City. The next Sunday morning, I check the status online and nothing. There was some important stuff in there that we needed for Monday morning and they had no clue where the bag is. United said they would put it on the next available flight which was sometime at 6ish am. So then my wife and I began hitting the support line calling the baggage support center. These people were just incompetent and had no clue about customer service. Quite frankly they are give a script to read and I had to repeat the same information every time I called. It was almost 3pm and after calling innumerable times, finally there was one helpful person, who called both the newark and chicago airports, located the bag and put it on the 6pm flight. I think United delivered it sometime in the middle of the night as the doorman had my luggage for me in the morning and to my surprise one of the wheels was gone. So much for using that again.
On another note, I booked this ticket with my miles and when I check my credit card bill online, I see a 75$ charge from United for that. On calling the mileage account I found out that apparently booking the ticket for a flight within 7days gives a 75$ charge. Wow.. how come I never saw that when I booked the ticket. I would expect that at least United would show me these charges when I booked the flight and not sneak it in with credit card. Right now I have no receipt of that charge and I am liable for it. I already disputed it and will see how that plays out.

So lets rehash: excess baggage – 50$, uninterested personnel at the airport – not very useful, lost bag – great, broken wheel that render it useless on receiving the bag – very nice, 25K miles used for ticket with 75$ hidden charge – sneaky, horrible customer support-painful, lost Sunday – priceless!

So my question to my non-existent audience, what is the price of lost bags to United or any airline in general? I remember seeing a news article about the number of lost bags by airlines that were in the 100 thousand range which still account for less than 1% of the total luggage. While generally a frustrating experience, how much value is there to the airline to have better support and systems in place for customers? In my personal opinion customers are generally not attached to an airline and price is a deciding factor. But think about extreme situations like these from a customer point of view – if I could have had better support for my lost bag, I would much rather fly United next time and would recommend this flight to everyone. I think there is strong benefit in viral marketing especially if United can capitalize on the voices that they have heard. A simple example that they can implement – for every time they loose a bag, they should survey these customers about their experience and publish the results online. In general there should be a section on their website that posts customers concerns and United’s response to these. Overall I think United has decent customer support and it can be a strong differentiation factor that can also increase revenue when compared to other airlines.