I just got off the phone with a customer rep from United Airlines. I was calling them to book the two free tickets that Jamie and I received when we were vacationing in San Francisco a year earlier (Day 1, 2, 3). Firstly, their phone tree is terrible. My path that I wanted to take was to talk to an agent directly. So, when I followed the phone tree, I realized that I was talking to this computer and it was working for me. I didn’t like it. I already had my flight number and I just wanted to get my tickets confirmed.
Three calls later, I finally tried the “press zero” trick and what do you know… I was taken to an agent. This agent was very difficult to understand and he kept raising his voice to me. I kept saying “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you”. But, what I really wanted to say was, “Can I get someone with better English?”. At any rate, after getting all of the details to the agent, my tickets are placed and I need to send the free ticket vouchers in.
So, here’s my last issue. Why do I have to send vouchers in? I don’t get it. What is the value in sending in a paper ticket when I could have been provided with a one time code that I could have used on united.com? From a customer experience standpoint that would have been ideal. None of this calling some phone tree, tricking the phone tree to get me an agent, and then getting an agent who has a difficult time with English. I just wish I could have purchased these tickets online with a coupon code and have that be the end of it. So, in the future I guess I’ll think twice about taking the free tickets from United. My only problem is that I’m a sucker for free stuff.
Really, if this is how math is taught in Washington schools, I’m just as concerned as M.J. McDermott. “When problems get difficult, reach for a calculator” isn’t acceptable to me. You should have these basic math skills… at least.
I’ve been a big fan of Google Reader since I read about it a while back. One of the cool features of Google Reader is that I can share items with the world. If you’d like to see what I’m sharing, you can see my shared items by clicking the following link: http://www.google.com/reader/shared/02438335016718417319 If you’re into the syndication thing, there’s a feed available to subscribe to what I’m sharing as well. Pretty neat if you ask me.
When Jamie and I were coming back from my brother’s wedding, we were looking at the pictures that I took when we were on the plane. Somewhere between the time when I took my little camera (Canon SD400) out of my carry on and when I got home, the camera was lost. I am fairly certain that I left the camera on the plane. It is very uncharacteristic of me to leave things where I don’t remember them to be or even to lose items. Needless to say, I’m bummed.
More bummed that I lost the photos than anything. But, I’ll get over it and move on. I can’t let this bother me too much. It’s just a camera. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I lost it in my room, but the chances of that are pretty slim since I’ve been looking around for it and I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Usually by now I would have thought of a place to look for it, but I’m pretty positive that it was either left on the floor or in the seat pocket and I forgot about it. With our flight being a night flight and the camera case being black, it is pretty easy to see how I lost it.
I guess this can be seen as a hint to me as well. I have this digital SLR that I don’t shoot with very much and maybe this will get back shooting photos with that again. Who knows. But, I think I’ll hold of on getting a new smaller digital camera until later on, right now I just don’t need it, no matter how much I miss it.
The project I’m currently on out at Microsoft has had new work presented to us and we need a prototype developed by Monday. Seeing that the remaining members of our team were going to head out to the West Region Fly Back this weekend, we found out that we wouldn’t have time to get the prototype done. This left us with the only viable option: not attending fly back. I’m kinda bummed, but when you work in a client driven business we are there to meet the client’s needs and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll have the prototype by Monday.
There is this telemarketer that keeps calling me (1-888-447-4169) over and over again. I am on the do not call list for both my phones since 2003 and I have called this number 3 times to have my number removed from the list. All three times I was assured that “yes” we will remove your account, but it might take 5 days (or something) to remove you from our system. Well, I know it’s been way longer than 5 days and after 177 calls starting on October 16, 2006, I’ve had enough.
I reported the number to the Do Not Call List, so we’ll see what comes of that, but if any of you have an idea on what else I can do to get these folks off of my back, please let me know. I’d be more than happy to hear your ideas.
