‘They cancelled for weather but other flights are able to go?’: United Airlines promises passenger refund, leaves her $1600 out of pocket

It seems United Airlines is doing its best to turn even the most loyal of its frequent flyers into enemies. Memorably, this summer played host to a viral incident when a Karen used her powers for good to berate the airline for keeping passengers cooped up at the airport for hours and hours, leading to one poor passenger even suffering a panic attack. Now United strikes again as a literal card-carrying former member of its fan club has admitted how she was sorely let down by the airline, and has a severe credit card charge to prove it.

TikToker llove_lola has come clean about a recent nightmare experience she had which is pretty much a flight fiasco pulled from all of our nightmares. First of all, just two and a half hours before heading out to catch a flight from San Francisco to Denver for a family wedding, the customer received an email that her flight had been cancelled due to “weather problems.” Although the passenger and her family had been automatically rebooked onto another flight, it was the next day, meaning it would be too late to make the wedding. And things only got worse from there…

After calling United, the customer discovered there was a Southwest flight leaving just an hour after their original cancelled one. Although United could not arrange the rebooking because SW is not one of its partners, the phone rep assured her that she could get a refund at a later date as it was United that had cancelled the first flight. The South West flight came to around $1600 for six people. OK, you can probably guess where this is going, right?

Once the trip was done with, llove_lola penned a “very nice” email to United requesting the refund. Weeks went by with no response, so eventually she followed it up again. This time, she received a reply arguing that United does not owe her a refund, despite what she was clearly promised before, because the airline can not be held responsible for weather problems. As the TikToker points out, these mysterious weather problems didn’t seem to affect the South West flight she ended up getting just one hour later from the same airport.

So, what is the thing to do in this situation? As one helpful commenter suggested, one option would be to file a complaint with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and/or the BBB (Better Business Bureau). “If you don’t care about flying with them again. File with FAA complaint and [send] the Better Business Bureau a complaint and watch them call you,” they wrote. Other commenters agreed with this tip, citing times when they got BBB involved and companies such as UHaul were suddenly all too eager to help.

With any luck, this unlucky United passenger will get her much-deserved refund, but it’s unclear if she’ll ever set foot on one of the airline’s planes again.