My reserved seat was changed by United Airlines!
I booked a flight from Washington, Dulles to Brussels, Belgium in February of 2012. I upgraded my seat to Economy Plus. My daughter was flying with me, so we had seats next to each other.
When I went online to get my boarding pass, United had changed my seat. I contacted three agents and two supervisors over and phone and talked with an agent and a supervisor and arrived at the airport an extra hour early for United to return my original seat to me.
The gate agent and supervisor were very rude and said : "What's wrong? Is your daughter too young to fly next to a stranger?"
I asked nicely to get my seat back. The agent and supervisor refused, saying the confirmation I received from United was worthless and they had to reconfigure the plane three times. This was a Boeing 777, and we specifically reserved Seats 20A and 20B because there were only two seats together instead of three.
This ruined the first part of my vacation taking this 7-hour-and-39-minute flight where I was forced to sit next to strangers, and some very smelly ones at that.
What recourse do I have?
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Surfer Dude
13 years with United, all as frontline (public contact) in 5 different airports coast-to-coast, smaller...
I would contact customer resolution page on website a maybe earn some travel credits. Otherwise the only other recourse is to use another airline, or stick with us and hope that "we" get the message across by then. There wre so many better ways to deal with that, especially at departure time.
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Fly by Night and Day
3 Decades of Experience working for United Airlines!
When a plane is replaced with a different configuration, there is unfortunately nothing you can do to reconfigure it back to the one where you had the original seats together. Everyone had to be moved around. There is, unfortunately, no guarantee on a specific seat, but I would suggest contacting Customer Care on this link to let them know your dissatisfaction with the change.
https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/Contac... -
GLOBAL CONCIERGE
Global resources for your trip. Currently Position- United Club; Main customer contact at the airport...
Hello FW,
Sorry for this inconviniences. You can complaint in the links above and express your bad travel experience.
Nowadays United doesnt sell seat numbers anymore. WIth so many changes into seat configurations (all the boeings 777 are being redesign with new layouts and some of them are still with old configurations.. these means that a economy plus cabin with an older version of 198 seats, now is available with 221 seats with different seat rows as well).
So it depends on so many things... If one single aircraft is scheduled to fly from washington to brussel and, if, for any reason, operations need to reschedule all the fleet because one of them is under maintanance or re routed, grounded for any reason... a chain of events will affect the operation worldwide...
This means that passengers will be reacomodate, without calling them. United normally keeps windown and aisles ... when possible... but no guarantees...
And they need to do this on the day of departure... with 221 passengers and first and business class cabin as well..
So you can request a reasonable answer and or complimentary vouchers.. but I would say they will send you a Sorry letter... explainning the same...
What I cannot stand and understand is WHY the agents were so rude... this was not polite ...
sorry -
Travo
All your travel problems solved!
Hi FW!
If you paid for the Economy Plus seats, you can get a refund by requseting it online on the Refunds link.
Good luck! -
Dude
I have been employed with United Airlines, American, and Delta for last 30 years, currently with Independent...
E) Seat assignments, regardless of class of service, are not guaranteed and are subject to change without notice. UA
reserves the right to reseat a Passenger for any reason, including from an Economy Plus seat for which the applicable
fee has been paid. If a Passenger is removed from Economy Plus seat for which a fee has been paid, and the Passenger
is not re-accommodated in a seat with similar or greater extra legroom, or if a Passenger is downgraded from a class of
service and is not re-accommodated in a seat in the class of service for which a fee has been paid, the Passenger will be
eligible for a refund in accordance with Rule 27.
This is found under Contract of Carriage terms, see www.united.com, bottom of home page, download terms
