THE Lowly Peon

What's in a Name? 
21 May 2010, 11:44am

I made a pretty big mistake recently, and I'm glad I caught it. I also can't believe I'm still flying United.

I had just finished making a reservation at the Park Hyatt Chicago, a $500/night hotel at which we're staying for free, when I noticed something horrible. I was checking out all of our travel plans on Kayak.com, and realized that the plane tickets we bought so long ago, for a hefty sum of money, didn't look quite right.

Apparently when I bought the tickets, I used Daisy's English name. It didn't even occur to me. But then I recalled the last time we went to the states, when I put her last name as her family name, even though in Chinese the last name goes first. (Seriously, how can they not make this clearer? Some airlines ask for family and given names; United asks for first and last. For a Chinese person, whose family name is first, what do you do?)

So I called United and was surprised when I actually was put in touch with a human in the first five minutes or so. He told me without hesitation that this would be a name change, mumble mumble. I said okay, great, please change the name. He said, um, no, this is a new ticket. Let me talk to my supervisor.

He came back after ten minutes and said he could change it, but it would cost $25 per flight (two flights). I flipped. How bogus is this. I understand I made a mistake, but this is just changing a name. You seriously don't have any way in your computer system to change a name? He said that it requires printing a new ticket. Printing, I said. It's an e-ticket.

Then he said something that ticked me off, and I really got pissed. I hate to be that guy, but I've got 150,000 miles with United, which is clearly among the worst airlines ever. I'm loyal to them for absolutely no reason other than I made the mistake of going with United a long time ago. And all this poop* they do to me does not help their case.

So he commented on my use of the word "poop*" (I don't recall why I said it), and said he'd connect me with his supervisor. Which of course never works as planned. I was put through to that annoying computer guy, and had to enter all my information again.

The next guy, in a matter of five minutes, had changed Daisy's name to her correct name, no fee required.

So the moral of this story, apparently, and sadly, is that if someone tells you that you need to pay for something, and you don't think it's fair, get angry, tell them how you've pissed away money on them before, and then you'll get it for free.