The Trip Home

I flew back to Austin Tuesday. United Airlines managed to lose both my luggage and my dad's luggage (and about 4 others) on a simple domestic connection. So much for the sophisticated baggage system Denver is supposed to have. They had an hour and twenty minutes (1:20) to move the bags from one plane to the next and the weather was great -- so there really wasn't any excuse.

Probably the most annoying aspect was the automated tracking system you get when you call in. It is voice activated but misinterprets your responses probably 50% of the time. So you start your call annoyed that you've lost your luggage and end it angry that they have such a retarded system in place that doesn't allow you to talk to a human (offering instead to have you call back to its "wonderful" voice-activated system). Man, I was ready to kill someone.

After I finally managed to find a real human being and complained they offered a $50 certificate as compensation for my troubles. Here's a couple tips that'll save airlines $50 per passenger:

1) stop losing luggage. you need to investigate why the luggage was lost and take action to avoid it in the future.

2) if you're going to use an automated voice-activated system, test it so that it is at least 90% accurate. The thing couldn't even figure out when I said "YES" and "NO".

Mind you -- I'm no technophobe, far from it. But I am really frustrated by these cheap knock-offs that are intended to save a buck at the expense of customer service.

Another example was the lame safety video they are now using. It is computer generated (to save from having to pay actors residuals), but the animation was so bad that you couldn't tell what these "characters" were supposedly doing.

Penny-wise, pound foolish. You'd think that companies would learn, but they don't. That's why Dilbert is always on the money. Everyone thinks he works at their company because they all behave basically the same way.