Never Fly United Airlines!

After over a month of long distance calls to both the UK and the US including such gems as:

Operator 1: "Yes, that will be 45,000 miles for each ticket"
Stu: "Perfect, I've 93,000"
Operator 1: "Right thats all booked, can I have your US credit card number to charge the fees"
Stu : "Nope. I'm a UK customer"
Operator 1: "Ohh, you'll have to book this through the UK office, good-bye"

UK Operator1: "Who? TACA? We can't book this flight"
Stu: "Why?
UK Operator1: "I don't know" (computer say no)

US Operator 4: "Yes I can book that, it will be 50,000 miles per ticket"

US Operator 6: "There is no availabilty on flights between La Paz and Guatemala"
Stu: "We are flexible about which cities we fly between and can overland. Can you suggest an alternative city in Bolivia or Peru that we could fly from?"
US Operator: "You have to tell me which city you want to fly from."


US Operator 7: "Waiting for TACA to confirm these seats you´ll have to call back"

Stu: "I´m calling to confirm flights from Lima to Guatemala"
US Operator: "Sorry sir these seats have been cancelled, we only hold them for 3 days"
Stu: "But you told me to wait for TACA to confirm them 2 days ago!"


UK Operator: "I can't work out how much to charge you, you have to call the US to get them to calculate the taxes"


Stu: "Terrific. So you´ll email me the details of our e-tickets"
Operator: "Oh no, we can´t issue e-tickets they have to be paper ones." (originally promised e-tickets)


UK Operator: "Ecuador? Could you spell that please sir?"
Stu: "Echo, Charlie, Uniform, Alpha, Delta, Oscar, Romeo" (really slowly)A few minutes later...
UK Operator: " Where is it that you´re calling from again?"


Stu: "OK. Where is the closest United office in Ecuador so we can pick them up?"
UK Operator: "You are in South America? Won't you be passing through Dusseldorf or Paris to collect your tickets?"
Stu: "No!"
UK Operator: "Right, we´ll send them to your home address in the UK then."


US Operator 897: "Yes, United don't have offices in South America, but you can go to either Quito or Guayaquil in Ecuador"


UNITED (not TACA) office in Guayaquil (In Spanish): "The tickets will be here in a few days. You just need to pay $200US in taxes and issuing fees"
Stu (In Spanish): "But we already paid the taxes through the UK Office"
UNITED (not TACA) office in Guayaquil (In Spanish): "I´m sorry sir but there´s no record of that in our system"

UK Operator 352: "The payment takes 3 to 4 days to process"
Stu: "I paid a week ago, why hasn't it been processed"
UK Operator 352: "yes, the payment takes 3 to 4 days to process"
Stu: "Good, because I paid a WEEK ago"
UK Operator 352: "yes, the payment takes 3 to 4 days to process"


All Operators: "I´ll just check with my supervisor"
All Operators: "Have I met your travel needs today?"

costing US$200 in head banging wall conversations with United, US$190 in paying the taxes twice, US$213 to buy the additional mileage points and US$100 for United to issue our promised e-tickets in paper to an office they didn't even know they had, we still had to do a victory dance as we finally had 2 tickets from South to Central America even if they are the most expensive "free" tickets ever. Yay! Moira, we´re on our way!

Guayaquil wasn´t all pulling our hair out. After a bagging from the Lonely Liar we were pleasantly surprised by how clean, modern and reptilian it was. Check out these frilly fellas whose job description is to laze about the central park and occassionally chase small children and gringos taking too many close ups - look out!
Kaz and Stu ;-)

Lesson of the month: see blog title.
Arse of the month: you can guess.
Thought of the month: We hope they train their pilots better than their call centre staff!