First of all, let me say that I am just furious with United Airlines. However, the upside of United’s great screw-up for me as a customer has been that I rented a lovely bicycle in San Francisco yesterday and discovered a new level of cycling performance that might be personally transformationally. Let me explain…
With no sense of shame or embarrassment I admit to being a major international traveler. Running an organization that provides international conference services at more than seventy meetings per year and raising and generating several millions of dollars a year in both sales of services and fundraising means that I have to show up at places all over the world. Fundraising for, and managing, an international operation like IISD’s Reporting Services, means that travel is a big budget item for us. My cost-cutting strategy has been to book Business Class Round-the-World tickets out of countries where the US dollar has been strong, most recently in South Africa and Thailand. For between US$5,000 and US$8,000, I can attend three or four meetings per trip, while spinning around the planet and incorporating in some fundraising stopovers in with travel to international meetings, keeping my travel costs to a minimum. As a result, I both generate a lot of money for our organization, manage teams in the field and also fly considerably, racking up some big miles with my home air carrier, United Airlines.
As a result, I have moved to the highest status level with United Airlines called Global Services. This is the somewhat secret “fourth tier” level of recognition in the United system, which gives a level of personal attention that recognizes brand loyalty and rewards it with superb customer service. This type of mega-flyer status was recently written about in an article in the New York Times, No Perk Too Small for Top Fliers and also referenced in the film Up in the Air with George Clooney. This level of recognition from United Airlines makes it very easy to both book United flights and move easily through the UAL system, making it a simple choice to continue spending money with United and flying with the Star Alliance. There are, without doubt, some stated and unstated benefits to being a Global Services customer, including some unwritten perks, including (or so I thought) the waiver of unreasonable luggage handing charges.
That said, I have taken advantage of my Global Services status (and my Star Alliance Gold status) when traveling with my bicycle. My bike, in a soft case, weighs 11.6 kg (25.5 pounds) and I have always checked it in as a “checked bag equivalent.” While the airlines are trying to increase their revenues by adding in “handling fees” for items like bicycles and extra bags rather than increasing fares, they have chosen not to charge their most frequent flyers for their bags or other perks, fearing that they will alienate (as they have done with me) their high revenue passengers. The non-US carriers are much better about this than the US airlines, who understand that the high mileage business flyers are a group of travelers who should be pampered and not punished for choosing to fly with their airline. Up until this last week, every single airline has chosen to exercise the highest of good judgment in checking my bike in without charging me a “handling fee.”
However, on Christmas morning at the United Airlines check-in counter at JFK airport in New York, Jeannie Garcia, the UAL counter agent, insisted in charging me a US$175 fee for transporting my bicycle from New York to Los Angeles despite the fact that I was traveling on a business class ticket (upgraded with miles to First Class) and as one of United Airlines’ high revenue passengers with Global Services status. Unfortunately, there was no Global Services representative at JFK on Christmas morning to help Ms. Garcia to make a better decision on how to deal with my bicycle.
Here we were, four of us (Pam, Sam, Kai and myself) all traveling on First Class tickets and with United’s highest level of customer status and my bicycle was the lightest of our five bags and they wanted to charge me US$175. If I had lied and said that it was golf clubs or a snow board or skis, it would not have cost me anything extra since United will transport some lightweight sporting equipment but not others for free. I was furious with both Jeannie Garcia and also her supervisor, Kathryn Williams. Unfortunately, it appears that the corporate management with United Airlines are golfers and skiers, providing golfers and skiers with the ability to travel without an extra charge for their equipment, but not cyclists.
It was my distinct impression that neither Ms. Garcia or Ms. Williams was interested in the long term advantage of their employer, United Airlines. After listening to “galley talk” for many years, it is clear that there are a number of employees at United Airlines who do not work in the interest of the company. Any reasonable employee of a company who has the opportunity to avoid alienating a good customer would be expected to exercise some good judgment and discretion in the application of the guidelines regarding optional fees. I explained, quite plainly to both Ms. Garcia and Ms. Williams, that my continued customer loyalty to United Airlines depended on their choice of whether to charge me, as one of their high revenue customers, this additional charge. They seemed determined to lose me as a loyal United traveler, probably due to their dislike for their employer. Just my impression, but certainly a plausible explanation for why an employee would purposefully alienate a high-revenue customer.
Over the last few years, it has been increasingly difficult to remain as a loyal United Airlines customer since United has eliminated all international flights from New York. If I want to make a flight to either Asia or Europe, I have to fly from one of the NY airports and connect in Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles or San Francisco. So, it was with some interest that I have been following the addition of Continental Airlines into the Star Alliance and the possible merger/consolidation of the two airlines, since Continental has heaps of non-stop flights to international destinations from NY. My guess is that in the next year Continental will absorb United, retaining the United Airlines brand but under Continental management. However, in the meantime, I’ll probably be moving a lot of my personal travel over to Continental since their policy for the bicycles is much better and I have been assured that if I am traveling on a business class ticket with Continental and as a Star Alliance Gold flyer, I will NOT be charged an additional fee.
OK, so that was a very long explanation for why I had to rent a bicycle in San Francisco this week.
During the last week in Palm Springs I was so upset by being charged US$175 by United Airlines that I dreaded flying this weekend from Los Angeles to San Francisco and then this week from San Francisco back to New York. Potentially, if the LAX and SFO counter agents wanted to charge me for my bike, the cost would be an additional US$350, just for two days of bike rides in and around the Bay Area. As someone who abhors confrontation, I was quite anxious thinking about the confrontation at the airports. Although I had written to the United Airlines Global Services customer service agents, asking for a clear understanding of the unwritten rules regarding that a UAL high-revenue customer could expect regarding my 12 kg bicycle, I had not heard back from them. So, I decided to send my bike back to NY using FedEx Ground, leaving me without a bicycle to ride here in San Francisco.
On arrival here, I called to Bike and Roll, a bicycle rental outlet located near my hotel in Fisherman’s Wharf.
For a reasonable price they had a Trek Madone 4.5 for rent. While not the highest end of the Trek racing bikes, it was certainly a nice bicycle and proved to be a lovely ride. In fact, the geometry and responsiveness of this rental bike has caused me to question whether my current fame, a Griffen Kompressor, is really the best bicycle for me considering my weight, strength and the quality of my components (Shimano DuraAce 7900 with a 7950 compact crank and Di2 electronic shifters). I also loved the Bontrager seat, which seemed to fit me better than my current Selle Flight.
Renting the bike at Ride and Roll was really easy. They put my own pedals on to the bike, adjusted the seat to my required height, made sure that the derailleur was adjusted, pumped the tires to 120 psi and were friendly, helpful and knowledgeable about local cycling routes. This is a full range rental shop, which rents mostly indestructible cruisers to tourists, but can certainly handle the high-end customer needing a better than average ride.
Yesterday, Saturday, after renting the bike, I took the ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito and rode over the mountains to Muir Beach and up through Muir Woods and them back over the mountains to Larkspur for a ferry boat ride back to San Francisco after dark. Here is the link to the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/21546547
After pounding through the highlands towards the ferry in Larkspur, my GPS somehow routed me on a shorter route as I was trying to catch the late afternoon departure for San Francisco. The stupid GPS took me on a back road that might have been shorter but gained 150 meters in altitude and made me miss the boat by ten minutes. The upside was that I rode into Larkspur and found the Wipeout Bar & Grill for a nice late lunch and some really tasty Kona Porter on draft. After a lovely meal I rode to the ferry for the 5:45 pm departure and was back at the hotel after dark at about 7:15 pm… long day.
This morning I rode out from Fisherman’s Wharf and over the Golden Gate Bridge to the Marin Headlands. This photo below is from Fort Mason looking out towards the Golden Gate and the Headlands beyond the span.
Today’s wind was rather unusual for the bay, coming out of the North rather than the usual West, which meant that it was a long, hard slough into the wind going across the Golden Gate bridge. But, it also meant that the ride through the cliffs above the entrance to San Francisco Bay just to the northwest of the bridge was somewhat protected. This shot, below, is from the lovely cycling roads that snake up into the mountains above the bridge.
After riding out to the top of the headlands (below) , it was a steep drop down to the Bonita Point Lighthouse and then a climb up over the hills to a tunnel that lead into the Sausalito area.
Below is the shot on the descent towards Bonita Point lighthouse
When I was a kid, I remember asking who had painted the rocks white. Here is a picture of Bird Island, a rocky crag out past Bonita Point and heading north along the coast line towards Muir Beach beyond.
Here is a map of the entire ride today, which can be found at the GarminConnect site at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/21627179
After arriving in Sausalito, I was joined by Chris Spence, my IISD Reporting Services Deputy and his parents who were visiting from New Zealand. We had lunch at Poggio’s and I traveled back into San Francisco on the ferry.
I returned the Trek Madone to Rock and Ride to settle in for a long afternoon watching football and rooting for my NY Jets against the Cincinnati Bengals (and drafting up this blog post). Looks now like we’ll see the Bengals again next week in the first round of the playoffs.
So, bottom line is that it may be that United Airlines has both lost me as a customer and accelerated my shift to a new bicycle frame. If United can’t tell me that they will not charge me a handling fee for my 25.5 lb. bicycle bag on upcoming trips, I will move my business to Continental Airlines and shift over to a carbon fiber frame as a result of my experience on the Rock and Ride Trek Madone. Great weekend in San Francisco.
