United rips off elderly couple for $3k, offers $600 back

By Cory Doctorow at 9:59 am Thursday, Jan 4

Mahesh's parents were flying from Omaha to Sri Lanka, but they got hosed in LAX, where United refused to honor their (perfectly valid) tickets. They ended up shelling out $3,000 to get to Colombo, and when Mahesh wrote to United, they sent him $600 in vouchers, telling him that they couldn't "respond with the generosity he'd anticipated."

Everthing went fine with the first leg of the flight from Omaha to Los Angeles, but when they went to check in for the flight from Los Angeles to Singapore, UAL refused to honor their tickets, claiming that the tickets have not been approved, authorized and authenticated. My father had argued with them that UAL did not have a problem with the first leg of the flight and how the tickets had magically become invalid. Without recourse and being in the middle of their journey, they were forced to purchase new tickets at a cost of $1000 to fly to Singapore. UAL's code share partner, Srilankan Airlines did the same in Singapore, claiming that new tickets have to be purchased at a cost of US $1860 for them to complete the last leg of the journey.

Link (via Consumerist)