For those of you who think a well-worded complaint is the fastest way to a free ticket, I have some bad news: The airlines are on to you.
Consider what happened to George Yen. He found himself locked out of his Mileage Plus account after United Airlines took issue with his frequent complaints.
Yen says the grievances — and the miles he was awarded as a result — are justified. When he flies on United, he says, “I usually experience lots of problems — delays, baggage issues, cancellations.”
But the way United handled his loyalty account was anything but justified, he says.
United placed my mileage plus on an audit, and since October I have been unable to utilize any of my miles. I have more than 100,000 miles due to credit card offers (since I have a United Airlines credit card) and I fly with United often.
They have held my account on this status for months now and I have been calling customer relations, Mileage Plus customer service again and again. They recommended that I deal with Mileage Plus Audit or the Mileage Plus Fraud Line.
What doesn’t seem fair is that I can continue to accumulate miles but not use them.
These miles should not be frozen. I emailed and called customer relations more than a dozen times, and most of the agents are not even located within the U.S. or give me much more information in regards to this matter.
I asked United about Yen’s case. It is unclear why the audit took so long, but a representative told me that Yen’s entire account wasn’t frozen — only the miles that were being audited. What’s behind the audit? The letter he received explains almost everything.
Since your Mileage Plus enrollment last year, you have engaged in a number of communications with various United departments. Our employees have attempted to satisfactorily resolve your various issues. Unfortunately, it appears that you have engaged in conduct that causes us great concern.
During this last year, you have contacted us well over 200 times concerning alleged disservice issues. As discussed in my phone conversation with you yesterday, the frequency of your contacts with us is very disturbing in light of the fact that you have only flown with us for the last 6 months.
Accordingly, we have completed a historical review of these contacts and have concluded that a majority appear to be directed toward securing goodwill compensation in the form of entitlements, i.e. certificates and miles for future travel and upgrades. Our review found that although you flew only 24,891 actual miles in 2008, you contacted us to obtain mileage compensation of 68,500 miles, numerous upgrades, and $5,125 in dollar off certificates.
Our review also found that you were provided with significant compensation due to your initiation of contact with us numerous times over the same issues. Quite frankly, much of this compensation was offered without our knowledge that you had already been appropriately compensated. These entitlements went well beyond the point of providing you with reasonable compensation for your alleged disservice issues with our company.
I have therefore adjusted your Mileage Plus account by the 68,500 miles credited originally and by 40,000 miles for the duplicate dollar off certs you have obtained and used for your tickets. Your account is now out of audit status and available for web use.
Mr. Yen, we have endeavored to address all your concerns in good faith. However, given the amount of compensation requested by you as well as our concerns about the validity of many of these, I must respectfully advise you that any future abuse will result in the closure of your Mileage Plus account and cancellation of any accruals. While it is regrettable that we have to take this position, it is necessary to preserve the integrity of the Mileage Plus program for the vast majority of the members who participate in accordance with the program rules.
OK, then.
So both sides agree that Yen did a fair amount of complaining, and received miles and upgrades from the airline as a result of questionable service.
Yen says the airline froze his entire account and took months to respond to his query (actually, that it didn’t have a meaningful response until he contacted me). United says it didn’t freeze his whole account but confiscated a vast majority of the miles it gave him because they went “well beyond the point of providing [him] with reasonable compensation.”
Who to believe?
Is Yen a serial complainer? I don’t know. He seemed pretty reasonable in our email exchanges. But 200 complaints in six months seems like a little much. Was United justified in removing nearly all the miles? I don’t know. Something tells me that a few of those complaints were probably legit.
Bottom line: Don’t overdo the complaining. United’s audit was triggered when it found more goodwill miles than miles actually flown. If your frequent flier account is leaning in that direction, watch out.
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I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work :)
Shows how poorly managed UA is that they admit they didn’t know what 1 department was doing at a time when another department was doing something else. If they are so incompetent that they can’t coordinate in Customer Relations as to who gets what, it shouldn’t be the complainer’s fault that multiple people give him certificates or miles. That shows a lack of internal controls, it shows the poor training of the off-shore centers, and more. Gives me even less reason to fly aboard one of the weakest links in the Star Alliance. With CO joining later this year, I will be able to completely write off UA for good.
He complains over 200 times to a company which rightfully froze his account, then he complains to Elliott about getting busted for being a serial complainer?
One does not get something for free just because one feels that he wasn’t treated right.
I worked for a major airline’s customer relations office for a very long time – almost my entire airline career.
1. UA should be ashamed of the fact that it didn’t use any system of checks and balances to find that this guy was a chronic complainer. Doing so is simple “Customer Relations 101.” Is their system (or are their employees) so sloppy that they can’t see that someone has contacted them to complain 200 times in six months? I’ve seen the complaint database they use and it has a “search for duplicate name” feature.
2. It does sound, from my experience, like this guy thought he found the Goose That Laid The Golden Egg and was taking advantage of the system. When customers get busted for overzealously gathering those eggs, they squawk very loudly.
3. UA should never have let this get to this stage (they should have cut him off a long time ago),
4. One of the happiest days of my customer relations career was when my boss came to me and said “We are firing Mr. X and canceling his [frequent flyer] account. Write him a letter telling him so.” Mr. X had used me as his personal whipping boy for years, screaming, cussing, calling my personal cell phone at all hours, berating front-line employees, etc. (but almost never – at least by me – getting any compensation. He flew >100k miles/year, but eventually, the cost of the nastiness he inflicted on front-line employees exceeded the revenue we earned and we sent him packing to abuse some other airline. I did the dance of joy.
Look, we all know airlines aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but 200 phone calls in 6 months!? No airline deserves that kind of harassment. What a complete customer service nightmare. I would not want him flying my airline, I’d be too afraid he would be looking for a reason to sue.
Sorry but its not United’s fault. This guy is a user. Having experienced people just like him, working at the front desk of a hotel in Orlando. I know first hand how jerks like this guy attempt to abuse the system. They wait till shift changes in order to complain to as many people as possible to get money back or free upgrades.
United did the right thing….
200 complaints! For 6 flights!! This fellow should consider himself fortunate not to have had his account cancelled asap and not been told to go and fly a kite.
I happen to think UA did do the right thing in this instance. Essentially the spanked him and sent him to bed without his dinner. To me the punishment seems to fit the crime.
Now let’s step back and take in the bigger picture of how airlines treat customers in general and ask “Do airlines in effect create the kind of behavior above”
For me the answer is an overwhelming YES.
As a customer you’re faced with the “Four Horseman of Aviation”
Fare Rules
Contract of Carriage
Fee after fee
Unresponsive Customer service
So is it a surprise that some people go overboard and try to work the system to their maximum advantage? To me the mystery is why more don’t behave in the manner described above.
Airlines MUST be forced by their customers to abide by their own rules. I don’t seek waivers, favors or upgrades but I do insist on being treated in the same manner that I treat my best customers. As a result I get a few “goodies” as a make good. The folks I deal with at my carrier of choice know that if I call something did happen and are eager to help.
Good for United Airlines. Mr. Yen is probably the type of person who buys a product at Costco, uses it for a year and then returns it for a newer one.
I normally give the consumer benefit of the doubt…but seriously…200 complaints in 3 months? Double compensation? Even I think United was right to cut this guy off.
United should’ve cancelled this guy about 180 complaints earlier. While it is legitimate to voice complaints, the frequency and number is ridiculous. Working in a service business for 25 years, I applaud United’s decision.
All too often, there are a few people who go way overboard in complaining about an issue just hoping for some form of over-compensation. If you have a legitimate complaint and it is not resolved to your satisfaction after one (or many) attempts, you also have the freedom to “vote with your feet” and choose another airline to do business with.
Boy, some people need to learn to read better. it does not say 200 complaints in 3 months or 6 trips and 200 calls.
I’ll take Mr Yen’s side on this. It is not up to him to monitor how many times he calls their CS department. Further, we do not know how many trips were taken. These could be trips from say Cleveland to DC or Cleveland to Chicago which are less than 1,000 miles round trip. That would mean more than 25 trips in just 6 months. We also do not know how many of those calls were actual complaints or how many were follow up calls to some non action on a promise made. I can attest that I have had to call some companies several dozen times just to get one issue resolved. We really do not know how legitimate his complains were. Let’s just say that he made 200 calls and this happened and he was on the flight that landed in the Hudson. Would you bash him for calling to complain one more time?
If United did not want to issue him any more miles then they should have let him keep what they had already given him and made a notation in his account that he was not to be given such freebies in the future. It is their fault that their CS agents were trained poorly and it is their fault that their systems do not work properly as to alert management of such calls.
I’m going to have to agree with Mike. United let it get out of control. If his complaints were frivolous, they should have caught on months ago, but once they have given out the miles, they should not be able to yank them back, they should just write them off and then take a closer look at their internal processes.
As for him only accruing 25K in 6 months, that is still a pretty good rate. That means he had earned whatever United calls their Elite status and was well on pace for Gold Elite. The article does not mention how many segments he flew. I actually think that the shorter flights are the ones where I have the most problems. A long Transatlantic flight, even on United, just seems to be run better, the planes are cleaner and the crew more professional. I know there are a lot of small airports on the west coast that only have United. Mr. Yen may have flown back and forth between Santa Barbara and LAX 75 times in the last 6 months, there are lots of opportunities for him to have grounds for a complaint, and probably several calls were required each time in order to actually get someone to take him seriously. But, then again, maybe he just needs to lower his standards to where most of ours are and not complain about every little problem.
There is an old saying, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
200 complaints, wow that is a lot. UA should have addressed this complaint before it came to this. UA gave out these miles for the complaints, they should not take them back.
Is Mr. Yen a chronic complainer or trying to get extra miles out of UA????
I believe in expressing yourself when you are not happy about certain situations, but 200 complaints in 6 months is going overboard.
Come on Chris, you need more of a backbone on this one.
You are a wonderful consumer advocate, but this time, the consumer is WRONG.
“Is Yen a serial complainer? I don’t know.”
Yes, clearly he is. 200 complaints in 6 months is *more* than a complaint every single day, including weekends! That doesn’t even give the airline time to evaluate and respond to one complaint before he’s calling to complain again!
“Was United justified in removing nearly all the miles? I don’t know.”
He received 68,000 compensation miles on only 24,891 actual miles. That is a ratio of 2.75 : 1.
United regularly offers “double miles” promotions… but this guy was getting nearly 3 : 1 (as well as upgrades, and over $5000 in certificates).
And finally, Mr. Yen failed to exercise the consumers best tool: If you don’t like the service, don’t be a repeat customer! The fact that he continued to fly with them demonstrates, conclusively to me, that he liked what he found with UA: an organization that he could get acceptable service from, and then take advantage of.
Customers like him make airlines less likely to seriously address real complaints from honest customers. His actions hurt the rest of us.
United should confiscate his entire account, and ban this customer from all future flights, and you shouldn’t be reluctant to say so.
Mike,
I think you make the best argument possible that we are not seeing the whole story. We do not know if Mr. Yee was a true serial complainer or just following up on the status of his previous inquiries which then could be logged by UACS as “complaints”. We don’t know if the duplicated “compensation” was due to incompetence on the part of the United Airline’s Customer Service personel or if was due to Mr. Yee gaming system.
For any of us to jump to conclusions without having all of the facts before us is ludicrous.
Indeed. Unfortunately I doubt we’ll ever get all of the facts, especially if one or both sides aren’t willing to talk.
Then again, my mom (God bless her soul) used to say too much of anything is bad…
This is difficult. I am satisfied that Mr. Yen is a serial complainer. What I don’t know is whether he is someone who is just trying to work the system, or if he is just never satisfied.
If he is trying to work the system, then United was right to take back the miles. Otherwise they should allow him to keep the miles.
I don’t call my mother 200 times in six months.
I don’t think we have to know the “whole story” to figure out someone’s not telling the truth and I don’t think it’s United. Yen said in his email to Chris that he had over 100,000 miles “due to credit card offers.” No, not true, he had 25,000 approx from actually flying and 68,000 from complaining plus an unknown amount of upgrades and $5,000 in cash.
Mr. Yen played the system and lost. What is amazing to me was that he emailed Chris about this and thought he was in the right. I call that chutzpah.
I have little sympathy for either party. Mr Yen does appear to have been gaming the system. However, United looks pretty bad too. The audit shows flaws in its own system and ut decided to penalize the customer. Clearly, United had agreed to compensate him for poor service. It should have withdrawn duplicate awards (with apologies for its own error), but honored the rest of them. Then it could be as careful as it wanted in future.
The more I think about it the more blame there is to go around.
On United’s side. If Yen gets double compensation, that United’s fault. United should have better tracking an auditing procedures to prevent such an occurence. Further, the miles that were not in dispute should never have been frozen. Mr. Yen appararently fly nearly 25k miles. No one disputes that. Then why should United be able to hold those miles hostage. Mr. Yen also has an undisclosed number of miles because of his credit cards. Again, those miles a legitimate and should not be affected, regardless of the outcome of the investigation.
On Mr. Yen’s side, it really does look like he attempted to game the system. Unfortunately,we don’t have the facts, but 200 call within 6 months is more than a call a day. By itself, is that proof? No, But it does raise eyebrows. My suspicion is that Mr. Yen stumbled across a loophole in United’s complaint system and was exploiting it. Unfortunately, he got greedy and was caught.
But again, this is all supposition on my part.
I agree with the airline’s position in this situatuion. Be a serial complainer all you want, but don’t always to expect to get something for free or be compensated.
It’s not for fair to other legitimate complainers who aren’t abusing the system.
I am starting to think that giving people perks to make up for shortcomings in customer service is the wrong way to go.
If someone has a problem that costs them money, that’s one thing, but how about a promise to fix the problem?
I know the last several times I had a problem, I didn’t want money or a free lunch, just for them to fix it and not have to deal with it again.
That depends on what those shortcomings are in each and every case. Some are justified while others aren’t, but some people still demand businesses compensate them for those that weren’t in their complete control to fix.
True story: a customer booked for a hotel room online. The page stated every applicable rule.
The customer called a few days later and complained to a fellow travel agent we didn’t “notify” him the hotel won’t accept him because he was below the minimum 21-age rule. He demanded some form of compensation for what he perceived was our fault, and that’s inspite of the page stating that age bit to begin with.
The agent, burdened with meeting his center’s targets, had “apologized” for what happened and gave him a coupon for his next hotel reservation. Off the customer went.
When I took his call a day or two after that, he complained he couldn’t get the coupon to work. I honestly thought this guy didn’t deserve the coupon upon reading the circumstances of his original issue, but…I had little to no choice but to follow through on the coupon and fix it as he “threatened” to go to the media about that.
Naturally this created a dilemma: many of us are familiar with the “customer is always right” motto. Many of us surely want to please our customers, but it can potentially unrealistic expectations that possibly and unfairly burden businesses to try accomodating them all.
Like Carver said, there’s plenty of blame to go around. IMHO, the question is what’s one prepared to do if/when that happens.
Looks like United is in this discussion. Is everyone else prepared?
This makes me respect UA even more. I’m glad to see that they are doing something about the 1% of their customers that cause 99% of the complaints!
What is next, cancelling of all services and blacklisting for just 10 complaints? 5? 2? 1? Just wait…before you know it we will be in customer service concentration camps and our economic lives will be “voided” or “cancelled” blocked from being able to buy anything anywhere when all corporations start jointly sharing “complaint” databases on us, just like credit card companies engaged in “universal default”. You complained at the grocery store? Ope! That airline ticket will cost you $200 additional now…and SORRY, we just ran out of seats! Have a nice day…
Chris – is this a joke? I’ve been flying 200+ segments per year for a decade with AA and can count my complaints on one hand. This guy logged 200 complaints in 6 months! UA would do themselves a favor by putting this guy on the no fly list asap.
Kudos to UA for cracking down on this kind of abuse. And Kudos to Elliot for exposing him. People like Yen make travel more expensive for the rest of us.
I agree with most of the posters in that this guy was a scammer and giving legitimate complainers a bad name.
The confusion about what miles were frozen and why he didn’t have access to those unfrozen miles might be explained by the fact that he was trying to claim a larger mileage award. In other words, he had 24K + unfrozen miles plus the 68K frozen miles. If he only tried to awards that were more than 25K miles and was unable to do so, he would have the perception that he couldn’t use “any” of them.
While it’s true United obviously needs a better system of checks to prevent the misuse of their compensation system, the main question remains:
Why would Mr. Yen give repeat business to an airline that he felt had given him so many problems as to necessitate 200 phone calls in such a short time frame if he wasn’t purposefully exploiting the loopholes he’d discovered with UA’s good faith attempts to retain him as a happy customer?
Also, does Mr. Yen dispute that many of his miles were accrued via duplicate compensation for issues UA had already resolved with him, as UA contends in their letter?
Ask yourself honestly people – if you had to complain 200 times in six months to any company, would you still choose do business with them? Short of Mr. Yen figuring out how to exploit the system for freebies, I can’t think of any other reason he would continue to do business with UA if he felt so strongly that they treated him so poorly as to require 200 complaints.
He played the system and he got caught. That’s his own fault.
How do I get all those free things from UA when they screw me around? Seems like I give up to fast.
Come on Chris,
Seriously, I know you are a consumer advocate, and at least on TV portray all the airlines as evil do-ers, but sometimes the customers do wrong. Wake up! Let’s get on to some meaningful topics.