What about their loyalty to me?
Don’t fly United.
I’ve flown 325K miles since 2002 on United Airlines. That’s equivalent to flying around the world 13 times in ~5.5 years.
United has 3 levels of status in their loyalty program, Premier, Premier Executive, and 1K. Up until this year I have always been at least Premier Exec, but twice I was 1K. I’ve finally dropped down to Premier, which still means I flew over 25K miles last year. Whenever I have a choice I always fly with them.
Today, they told me two things about my lowered status that really peeved me:
- If I want to book my flight with a human being on the phone, they’re going to start charging me $15 per phone call. I prefer to book online anyway, so this shouldn’t be a big deal, except that Lisa and I enjoy sitting next to each other when we fly, and coordinating this usually requires a phone call. Thanks, United.
- I can no longer book exit row seats in advance. I’m welcome to request them, and to beg for one on the day that I check in, but “advanced reservation” of exit rows is only available to their highest two levels of status.
Well, they’ve made my future travel decisions very easy. I’m going to burn off all the remaining miles and upgrades I’ve earned with them, and never fly with them again, when faced with a choice. I know that this isn’t exactly a hardship, and that they’re not running a charity, but they have an inferior product to JetBlue or Virgin America, and if they wanted my continued business, they had to earn it through loyalty.
It’s a shame it had to end this way.
