 |
My reply to United
Ed note: After giving United ample opportunity
to read our original letter and receiving nothing but a form
letter reply, we decided to get their attention through the
Web, and again, ask for a reply.
As mentioned elsewhere, at the request of the individual from United's
Customer Relations department to whom this letter is addressed, I have removed
his name from this page.
September 6, 1996
"M"
Customer Relations
United Airlines
PO Box 66100
Chicago, IL
60666
Re: REF #: 0220779A
Dear "M":
We recently received your reply to our two letters of complaint. Under
ordinary circumstances, we would have been satisfied with a sincere
expression of regret for the poor service that we faced throughout our
trip with United Airlines. However, since you did not deem our rather
serious complaints worthy of attention, beyond a brief, form-letter
reply, we felt compelled to express our disappointment in a more public
forum.
We should note that it was not merely the form letter that bothered us.
Rather, it was the sense that our many hours of time, patiently
explaining to you the ordeal we went through with United Airlines, had
been completely ignored. Since it appears too much to ask that you read
the three and a half pages of our initial letter, allow us to briefly
summarize the main points:
- the runaround we endured at the Toronto airport, resulting from
the total lack of assistance offered us by the United gate counter
agent
- the subsequent loss of our reserved seat assignments in Honolulu
- the damage to a wool suit that resulted from our garment bag being
carelessly tossed on the closet floor by a United flight attendant,
with a baby stroller placed on top
Had you read the final paragraph of our initial letter of June 13,
you would have noted that we specifically stated, "We are well familiar
with the occasional flight delay, lack of meal selection, and temporary
misplacement of checked luggage that plagues the entire airline
industry." Thus, replying with a note whose main emphasis is on delayed
or cancelled flights is not only irrelevant, but insulting.
Furthermore, since the second paragraph of your form letter begins with
"We fully recognize the importance of on-time performance to you," it
is somewhat ironic that your reply, dated July 24, was not postmarked
until August 22.
You may be aware of the very popular World Wide Web, and you have no
doubt heard of the Internet. One of the reasons the "web" has become so
pervasive is that it empowers individuals with the ability to reach out
to tens of thousands of individuals and inform them about topics of
interest. As a result of United's reluctance to actually read what we
had patiently written, and then, further insulting us with an
inappropriate form letter that completely ignores the substance of our
complaints, we decided to publicize these incidents through our own set
of web pages.
We have also registered these pages with various popular search
engines, so that anyone looking for information about your airline will
have an opportunity to read about our experiences. In fact, one of the
most popular search engines, Digital Equipment Corp.'s AltaVista,
presently returns a pointer to our page at the very top of the list for
a search on "United Airlines" as shown below:
Word count: Airlines:130389; United:2226478
Documents 1-10 of about 50000 matching the query, best matches first.
-
United Airlines Poor Show
- United Airlines = Bad Service? These pages began as a result of
some nasty experiences I had with United and their reluctance to
actually read what I had..
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~jer/poorshow/
- size 830 bytes - 4 Sep 96
While the content was only added to the system two days ago
(September 4, 1996), we are pleased to see that as of this writing, 50
individuals outside of the University of Toronto have already visited
these pages.
For your reference, we are enclosing a printout of the main page from
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~jer/poorshow/
Since we have already sent our original letter of complaint to you
twice, we did not feel it necessary to include another copy here. Of
course, should you wish to review it, you can do so through the World
Wide Web. We will be happy to update both our opinion of United
Airlines as well as these Web pages, if you find the time to apologize
with something more than a form letter.
Should United Airlines wish to follow-up on this matter, please note
that we are moving to Japan at the end of September, so our new mailing
address will be:
Dr. Jeremy R. Cooperstock
Sony Computer Science Laboratory
Takanawa Muse Building 3F
3-14-13 Higashi-Gotanda, Shinagawa-ku
Tokyo, 141, Japan
Obviously, since United has not replied to our complaints, we will be
using another airline for our travels to Japan.
Sincerely,
Jeremy R. Cooperstock and Vinita N. D'Souza
Cc: Mr.Gerald Greenwald, President, United Airlines
|
|
