This is a true story.  I swear.  It began on November 15, 2021, when, despite Covid, work schedules, and significant others, my three wonderful kids worked out their schedules to be in Telluride with Melissa and me for Christmas.  Meg had already accepted a job in Telluride and had relocated.  She was the easy part.  Melissa and I had already purchased our tickets for Telluride, so we were set.

Now, came the tricky part.  I had to get flights for Nick and Josh, and I wanted to get them on the same flight.  Booking the tickets was only half the issue.  The other half was coordinating Nick and Josh’s schedules and preferences.  Fortunately, thanks in no small part to planning our sabbatical, I have developed – if not quite an expertise – then at least a certain degree of competency with booking flights.  I have not, however, managed to tame my ticket-booking anxiety.  It’s the little pop-up messages on the web site that set my heart racing, the one that says, next to the cheapest and best flight option, “only 2 tickets left at this price.”  As if any U.S. airline had that kind of up-to-the-minute information about the thousands of seats on their flights.  The message would have been more believable if it said something like “Ignore the great price for this flight because we’ll probably cancel it anyway.”  Nonetheless, I see those little messages and my heart beats faster; I search frantically for my credit card; I imagine clicking on the flight and getting a tear-stained, laughing emoji with the message, “too bad, so sad, no more seats at that price.”  I kid myself that I am a rational being.  I am an emotional being with exactly enough intelligence to think I am a rational being. 

To cut to the chase, after clicking through multiple options, I bit the bullet and booked Josh’s flight for December 23.  Not the cheapest, but the best option.  I am a frequent flyer with United.  I have booked enough tickets online to know the routine.  I clicked through the outbound flight, then the inbound flight, chose the best seats I could find, plugged in Josh’s information, double checked the dates and times, plugged in my credit card, and hit purchase.  Within a few seconds, a new screen popped up with that all-important confirmation number.  You know the one I mean.  A random series of capital letters and a number.  The confirmation number you need if you want to look up your reservation at United.com, and the confirmation number you need when you check in online or at the kiosk at the airport.

Because I have been known to transpose dates and times, I diligently copy down the confirmation number and the itinerary in a notebook even though, as my kids and Melissa are quick to remind me, United sends that to you in a confirmation email.  I know this, but I am still a lawyer.  I like writing stuff down.  In any event, having purchased Josh’s ticket I went back online to get Nick’s.  Fascinatingly, the same exact itinerary, which only minutes earlier had only two seats remaining at that price, now had, apparently, unlimited seats available at that price.  I went through the exact same process and purchased Nick’s ticket.  Again, United gave me a confirmation number.  I wrote it down, MH8QTH.  I sent it to Nick.  Done.  Happy.  Blood pressure returning to normal.

Flash forward with me to December 23.  Meg and I have gone skiing.  It’s her birthday.  We’re excited that the whole family will be together later that night.  It’s a bit cold and cloudy, but who cares.  We’re on the mountain together.  As we hop off Chair 4, my phone rings and it’s Nick.  He’s standing at the United ticket counter in Seattle.  Josh is on his way to security.  The agent can’t find Nick’s eticket.  I say the one thing I have always believed in, “Do you have the confirmation number?”  We go back and forth on this several times.  I pull off my gloves so I can search my emails on my phone.  Time is running short.  I know back when I purchased his ticket there was the real possibility of a ticket shortage.  The web site was clear about this.  It’s Christmas, the lines are long.  He has only a few minutes to get through security and make the flight.  The coverage at the top of the lift leaves something to be desired.  I have Nick on speaker as I peel off my helmet and balaclava so my phone will recognize me.  My fingers have become too numb and fat to be of much help.  I hand by helmet and goggles to Meg who is being incredibly patient and trying to help.  I can’t find the United email with the confirmation number.  I find emails with Josh’s confirmation.  I find an email receipt for the upgraded economy plus seat I bought for Nick, but I can’t find the email from United with his confirmation number.  Finally, I find the email I wrote to Nick on the day I purchased his ticket with the confirmation number.  You see, I’m telling Melissa in the conversation in my head, you see how important it is to write this stuff down.  I am confident the issue will be resolved.  

I am dead wrong.

I am somewhat animated at the top of a chair lift two days before Christmas.  I have no choice and no more time to argue with the ticket agent. I cave in and buy a full-price ticket figuring I will sort the damn thing out later.  I am balancing a phone, a credit card and dealing with old eyes trying to read the card number, which anyone within twenty feet of me now has.  I get a text on my phone saying the purchase has been approved.  Nick is telling me the agent is saying the transaction has not gone through.  I may or may not have told Nick to tell the agent something I would later regret.  Nick sighs and says, “I’ll just go home.”

And then, at that proverbial darkest hour before dawn, the disembodied voice of the ticket agent says cheerily, “Oh, there it is.  You’re good to go.”

A few deep breaths later I look over at Meg, who magnanimously has not once told me to calm down or shoosh or stop being a jack ass, and I say, “Well what else could go wrong.”  At precisely that second, and I am not embellishing, my helmet and goggles slip out of Meg’s hand and, as if in mocking slow-motion, tumble endlessly down the side of the hill coming to a rest about 15 feet below us.

It is now January 10, 2022.  A new year.  I have been back and forth with several layers at United customer care, an oxymoron if ever there was one.  In my first foray, I got a young person, clearly not based in the U.S., who earnestly believed that refunding me $24.00 for the upgraded seat I purchased under the confirmation number no one could find, and that Nick never used was perhaps the single most generous thing United had ever bestowed on a disgruntled customer.  Think about that.  United charged me extra for a seat on an itinerary they claim I never purchased and felt like the king of Christmas when they refunded me the money they should never have taken in the first place.

In round two, I — and here’s my favorite word in this process – “escalated” to a senior customer care rep who convincingly told me that what had happened was a “blown locater.”  I have no idea what a blown locater is, but I loved the drama of it.  He explained to me in the near-perfect way in which we have come to accept that up is down that a confirmation number does not really mean that anything has been confirmed.  I marveled as his convictions, at his acceptance that United could use ordinary, well understood words in a completely contrary context.  I suppose, with everything else the airlines do these days, this is rather minor.  Despite his status and apparent insider knowledge, there was, in the end of this most extraordinary conversation, nothing he could do for me.  He suggested I put my facts in an email and send them to this address: customer.care@united.com.  You can see, I hope, how I might have wanted to engage in a conversation about the difference between the United customer care I was talking to on the phone, and the customer.care@united.com.  I held my tongue.  There is only so much fiction I can absorb in one phone call.

I have now written to customer.care@united.com a few times.  Ultimately, I received a response from a person named Mary.  We went back and forth, politely, several times with me explaining that I was seeking a refund of the difference between the price I thought I had paid on November 15, 2021 and the day-of fare I was forced to pay (dare I say under duress) on the day of Nick’s actual departure.  It is impossible to recount the delight I had in the exchanges with Mary.  I have transcribed the last two emails here.

Hi Donald, 

I thank you for contacting United Airlines Customer Care Department once again. 

I have spoken to our IT team to see if this is an isolated issue. They are requesting the copy of the original reservation under MH8QTH. I am working on your side to help this get rectified. If your are unable to provide the original itinerary that was sent to you for Nick’s ticket no one is willing to refund the difference in his ticket. They really need your itinerary.

I do have an option and hopefully you can accept it. Maybe your son is a college student and I am able to issue you an electronic travel certificate for the difference of $445.00. I look forward to your response and a copy of the original itinerary 

Regards,

Mary
Customer Care

Of particular concern to me in Mary’s email was the emphatic declaration that “no one” was willing to issue me a refund.  I pictured Mary in a huge call center with hundreds of IT folks berating her and chanting “no refund, no refund.”  This was my response to Mary.

Mary,

Once again, thank you for being an advocate for me and looking into this issue.  Please let me respond to your request for my itinerary.  

First, the issue here is that United’s system provided me with an itinerary confirmation number when I booked the ticket online.  The online screen at the end of the process, after I thought I had paid, said, as it always does, that your ticket has been purchased.  Your confirmation number is MH8QTH.  An email has been sent with your confirmation.  I wrote the confirmation number down, as I always do so that I can search for it in My United Flights later.  Then I clicked out of the page I was on and no email was sent.  Candidly, I did not even think about this at the time.  What I did do, is send my son, Nick, an email with his itinerary based on the notes I had written down when I booked the ticket.  I have attached to this email, a copy of that email I sent to my son.  You’ll note it is dated November 15, 2021.  

When you deal with your skeptical friends at IT, please suggest to them that their request that I send them a copy of the missing email itinerary is EXACTLY why I have the issue I have.  The itinerary was never sent even though United, on its web page for purchasing a ticket, confirmed the itinerary.  When they tell you I am making this up, ask them if they still think that the moon landing was a hoax.  Kidding.  Why would I make this up?  Also, I must be a freaking genius to make up a very specific confirmation number that matches exactly the format used by United for issuing confirmation numbers.  And, pause here for a breath, I did all this just to get approximately $400.00?  I hope you are both laughing and incredulous.  

Second, I have included a copy of the email from United refunding me $24.00 for my purchase of a premium seat for my son Nick on this supposedly illusory itinerary.  Again, please, ask the IT wonder kids why it is that United would have allowed me to purchase an upgraded seat if I had not already purchased a ticket?  Does United routinely accept random requests for upgraded seats from customers who have not actually purchased a ticket?  Again, I hope you are laughing and a bit disgusted.  

Finally, please remind the IT or financial geniuses, that I did purchase, on the day of his travel, a seat on the exact same Itinerary that I thought I had purchased weeks before.  I bring this up to emphasize that I am a paying customer.  I fly United regularly.  I have not engaged in some carefully orchestrated, mastermind scheme to get a few hundred dollars from a corporation that grosses billions.  

Mary, I don’t know anything about you other than the information we have so diligently exchanged about the Great American Airlines Heist.  Yet, I’m hoping (and confident) I am speaking to an actual human being with a beating heart and a working brain.  If so, please understand that this is not some raging battle for me.  In complete honesty, I am just a tad bit fed up with corporate greed and irrationality.  

I hope you will go to bat for me yet again.  And so you know, I am a living, breathing human being that really tries hard to believe in decency and kindness and honesty.  Although, I will admit, I fall short of my own expectations more often than I would like.  

In closing, I appreciate your offer to provide a voucher for Nick.  Unfortunately, I am unable to tell you that he is a college student.  He has graduated.  Of course, if it is easier for the powers that be to believe that Nick is still a student, I won’t deny it.  After all, we are all, in some sense, still students.

Good luck.  I have faith in you.

Don

An hour after I sent this email to Mary, she called me.  We chatted and laughed.  She assured me she had both a beating heart and a functioning brain.  She then issued me a voucher for the difference in the air fares.  She told me she had calculated the difference between the fares and it came to $444.37, but she was rounding that up to $445.00.  God love you, Mary.