As I recently wrote, my friends and I took a trip to San Francisco, which started off badly due to flight delays. The original United flight was scheduled to leave Chicago at 2 p.m. This would get us into San Francisco in time to have a nice dinner, followed by some relaxation at a sports bar.

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The plan started to go awry early on the day of departure. We received a couple emails notifying us of delays. Our 2 p.m. flight finally took off around 10 p.m., effectively killing what should have been our first night in San Francisco.

Since we had time to kill at the airport, we decided to talk to the United staff in hopes we would get some sort of compensation. We pled our case to at least five different United staffers and finally were told we would get a travel voucher within ten days. We were happy with that solution. We know flight delays are sometimes unavoidable, but we also knew that we wouldn’t get anything if we didn’t push the issue.

I am very pleased to report that United came through on their promise. About two weeks later, we received an email containing the flight voucher. It is unfortunate that we lost our first evening in San Francisco, but we are grateful that United made an effort to ease our displeasure. That type of customer appreciation should be applauded.

— John Wroblewski, distribution specialist