Pleasant United Airlines Surprise
 

Return from Dublin to SAT mid January was delayed first by the cluster with Boeing Max9 aircraft, then by a mechanical delay in EWR. Managed to catch the last flight of the day from IAH to SAT, arrived more than four hours later than originally scheduled. Expecting to encounter a stream of excuses and denials, I filed a request for compensation under EU261 on the UA website. Within a week or so I received an email from a customer service agent asking for the address to which the check should be sent. Received two checks (myself & DH) representing the 600 euro compensation in today's mail.
On a previous occasion where a UA delay our of LHR resulted in missed connection and an unscheduled overnight stay at IAD, UA repeatedly insisted I was not eligible for compensation. I ultimately used one of the third party services who successfully negotiated the claim for a percentage of the compensation, which took many weeks to finalize. So, this was a pleasant surprise!

Wow, good for you!! I didn't get that much when the engine caught fire on British Airways. I wish you had been with me on that trip.

Often UA will offer more in credit. We got $900 credit when our CDG-SFO flight caught on fire

Yeah, but the future flight credit has an expire date. I'll take the cash in hand!

How nice to hear this. I do wish it applied in the US. I agree, the cash in hand would be better. I had a credit expire and not due to lack of trying.

Ok, $600 vs $900. That would put the exchange rate at 1.5 UAD = 1.0 USD. And you still can't buy a bagel with UA$ :)

>> On a previous occasion where a UA ...
How long ago was that?

Have to use Credit in one year which for me is easy to do. Otherwise you can book a ticket with the credit within one year and fly later.

mrwunrfl - not sure exactly how long ago, but it was probably about 5 years ago. And it's 600 euro, so about 650 USD at today's rate of exchange

Seamus, am glad to hear that United made it right for you. We don't see many threads here that have positive things to say about any airlines, especially United. This thread reminded me of my one and only TR which was about the old United. Was wondering if your previous experience was before or after CO took over UA, but that is not it.

The quick resolution you got was maybe not a corporate-culturey kind of thing where they chose to add more humans to the task. Maybe it is due to IT improvements, globally and not just United, that make the CSA more produlctive. Software and communication improvements that automate the collection and authentication of the information needed. You send your PNR and "the system" does some magic and the CSA get a communication (like an addition to their task list in some app) with a button that says pay the guy. In the past, the form resulted in an e-mail that goes directly to the CSA and they had to do woirk. Am speculating and rambling a bit.

Humans to do the job are harder to find, but new software is not, something like:
ServiceNow is used to set up systems that define, manage, automate and structure IT services for companies. At a very simple level, think of it as a tool that allows you to raise and track tickets as well as process and catalogue regular IT service requests

I'm from the Continental legacy days, mrwunrfl, lived in Houston when CO was the hometown airline and had a fortress hub. It was horrendous in the early 90's until Gordon Bethune (a former pilot and savvy business guy) took over and basically told his employees there was no where to go but up (or out of business entirely) and set up a great four pillared program that brought the airline "from worst to first" and for years it was great flying CO. When the UA merger happened it was a huge cluster, with Houston and Chicago pointing blame at each other and operations got so bad that after a year or so I succumbed to American's poaching of top tier elites (and I hate AA) until they clearly demonstrated that they are as awful an airline as ever and I limped back to the "new UA." All airlines have ups and downs, but UA seems to have found its balance and on balance the advantage of being lifetime elite (with matching status for DH) makes it worth staying loyal. Since retirement I fly much, much less and rarely on a tight deadline so it all seems to work out pretty well.