This morning, I went online to confirm the time of our flight from Ontario to Denver. Couldn’t remember if it was supposed to be at Noon or 1 or 2.
Imagine our joy to find that it was showing as “Cancelled.” Oh, boy!
Margie starts looking for a customer service number — I give her my Premier mileage number (woot) and the Premier customer service line number (woot). She called, while I started checking e-mail …
Now, note, that I have a notification service from UAL by cell phone, hooked to my Mileage Plus number. I didn’t get any message about the cancellation, which was a bit disturbing.
So while Margie’s on hold, I start checking e-mail. Maybe they notified us that way. Nothing in my e-mail. But in Margie’s …
Ah. We’ve been re-booked from 1:40p ONT-DEN, to a 6:30p puddle-jumper ONT-LAX and then an 8:30p LAX-DEN.
Ah … no.
Margie, meanwhile, had taken on her Aspect of Firmly, Righteously, Yet Politely Angry Consumer Who Expects To Be Treated To Her Satisfaction, and raised up her Attribute of Getting Folks To Do Things. After several minutes of going back and forth, she’d managed to get us on a direct 7:30p flight from Orange County (SNA) to DEN, which is worlds of better than what they’d automagically shifted us to (if not as early a flight as our orignial). Excuses of “thunderstorms” and “flight crew” aside, it was the best that could be extracted, and though it chews into our weekend more, it does give us an unexpected bonus time here today.
Margie, in case I haven’t mentioned it, rocks.
And, as a Lesson Learned: Always check your flight online before you leave for the airport. We would have been sorely torqued had we been dropped off at Ontario before we found we had to kill 5-6 hours …
A small correction: I did indeed get a text message from United, at 2:43 a.m. — which I didn’t hear because my phone was on DND and it didn’t even tell me one had come in when I looked at it later.
That said, I think the lesson learned still pertains.