Excess Baggage

I flew United Airlines a couple weeks ago to Kona, Hawaii, and ran into a thoroughly frustrating customer service experience with them. I've flown more than twice around the world with United, but they may very well lose my business over this. Here's what happened:

I was traveling with four items: a laptop bag (carry on), a dive bag (checked luggage), a small rollaboard suitcase, and a garment bag containing my fragile carbon-fiber dive fins. You're allowed two carry-ons and two checked items (well, $15 for the first checked bag and $25 for the second one), but checking a third bag incurs a disproportionate $125 fee.

So, no problem. Between the garment bag and small rollaboard, I'll carry one on, and check the other one. The garment bag holds $1500 worth of fragile carbon-fiber swim fins, and hangs easily in the airplane's closet. I've carried it on before, on American, with no questions asked. So it's a no-brainer, I'll carry it on. The rollaboard is tough and durable and contains some changes of clothes. So I'll check it. Easy.

The attendant at the check-in counter sees my four items, sees the two that I'm checking (dive bag and small rollaboard), and the two (fin bag and laptop) that I'm planning to carry on. She doesn't bat an eyelash. So I check in.

Then I get up to security, and I get waved aside. (paraphrased:)

"Hey, you can't take that on the airplane!"

"Why not? I just hang it in the closet. I've carried it on before."

"But, um, it doesn't fold in half."

(Like they would ask someone to fold a wedding dress in half?.)

"Tell you what: I'll take it on the plane, and if it doesn't fit, they can check it from there. It's a half-empty flight, and I've always carried it on before. It fits just fine."

"No, you need to go down to the counter and check it, or get their permission."

(So the security guy doesn't know whether it's OK or not. Nice.)

So I run down to the check-in counter, and by now I'm runing tight on time. The attendant droid says, "Well, if security had a problem with it, I'm sorry, but you'll just have to check it. That's $125."

"What? If you had told me when I was here the first time, I would have checked it and carried on my rollaboard. A charge of $125 doesn't make sense here, because I shouldn't have had to check three bags no matter what."

"No. It's $125. Sorry."

By this time it was too late to get a supervisor, and I didn't want to miss my flight, so I resignedly plastered "Fragile" stickers all over my fin bag, and waved it goodbye. Then I ran back up through security and barely got on my plane.

Luckily the fins arrived intact, but on the flight home, I checked them again, just to demonstrate that I could fly with all my luggage perfectly fine without the $125 fee. Then I wrote to United Customer Service to request a refund. The Customer Service droid wrote back (paraphrased):

"We understand your complaint, and we're very sorry. It was our mistake. But we can't refund the $125, because it's non-refundable."

Huh? So I replied:

"Please escalate this to your supervisor, or to a higher level with the authority to reverse this charge."

And three days later, a response (from the same person!):

"I'm very sorry, It's our fault, but we can't refund the $125 because it's non-refundable."

So I called my credit card company to dispute the charge, and they took it off my bill. We'll see what happens.

And in the meantime, I'll be flying American.

UPDATE: My credit card company has determined that the charge was improperly applied, and has refunded me $125. I'm taking that piece of paper next time I fly with fins!