[GioInLA]

I was happy when they recently sent me my 1 Million Miler package and permanent Gold Status. However I later noticed that the perks were reduced by 50% or cut out altogether! What a gyp!

Anyway - I was to fly to Hong Kong Yesterday - BUR > SFO > HKG. The night before, I had just gotten my boarding passes online, and an hour later get a message that my 10 am flight to SFO was cancelled, and I was booked on the one at 8:41 pm, but still arriving in HK the same time (not possible). I then realized that it would be the a day later, and they expected me to wait in the SFO airport from 11 pm to Noon the next day for the flight! AND -for some reason - they said the flight was cancelled due to "weather" - 14 hours BEFORE the flight? They must have a great crystal ball.

I called immediately and after perhaps 10 minutes on hold got an agent and determined that the only way to catch the Noon flight to HK was to take the 7 am flight. OK - we did it and got a seat. However, we then find that when they had re-booked me, they canceled my seat reservation, so instead of Economy Plus, I was in a center seat in the back of the plane! Of COURSE there were no more seats available and a supervisor was of little help, refusing to give me back my seat reservation. Sorry - I am a tall guy and have not taken hundreds of flights with United to sit crammed into a center coach seat for 14.5 hours.

THEN - I called another agent and tried to move the entire schedule back a day, but there were no Economy Plus seats. I tried to shorten the trip by a day since I was missing my important meetings anyway, and they informed me that since that was a voluntary change, I would have to pay a $250 change fee. It was now after Midnight, I was exhausted from all this so I just canceled the flight in disgust.

WOW - What happened to Customer Service?

At this point - I will start looking for alternate carriers. It seems that there is little chance of me doing another Million on United.

[jimworcs]

This is the effect of the government allowing mega-mergers. Delta have done exactly the same thing.... they simply don't need to compete for your business any longer. If they have blamed the weather, 14 hours in advance of the flight, in writing you should copy this correspondence to the DOT and your Senator. Airlines abuse this "get out of jail free" card and this is a perfect example of it.