So I went to check in online, and it asked me to check some boxes for what luggage I wanted to bring on board. I did, and it told me that to carry on both a backpack and a roller bag it’ll be $45, or $65 if I try to play games and they have to check stuff at the gate.
I said fuck that, and unchecked some boxes. It said I couldn’t check in without putting a credit card on file, that they would charge if there were any issues and they wound up needing to charge me for my luggage. It wouldn’t let me continue without putting a credit card on file and checking a box that said they could charge me for my luggage, if they felt it was excessive.
I said fuck that and decided to check in at the airport. I threw all my stuff in a backpack to remove any wiggle room, and the kiosk said the same thing. I talked to one of the people, and she said it’s a new policy. I pointed out that I paid for my ticket, she could see I had only a backpack, and I wanted to get in the airplane. She told me to go talk to the guy at the end.
I talked to the guy at the end, politely, and eventually he printed a boarding pass for me. But you should know they’re up to some bullshit.
Obligatory “fuck United”.
They fucked up my vacation a number of years ago and I have since sworn them off. The most generous interpretation of the incident is that I missed an email updating a time change and arrived at the airport after the flight had left. Their next flight wasn’t until the next morning. My wife and I were looking and there was a flight from a different airline that would have cost them $400 each to book for us (they wouldn’t refund us so we could purchase that separately). The first agent at the counter completely understood our request but simply didn’t have the authority to make that decision. So she got a supervisor. The supervisor did that annoying ass thing where they listen to your request and then restate it in objectively different terms to sound unreasonable. In the end they covered a hotel for the night and gave us $550 each in travel vouchers and lost a customer for life. So they ended up paying way more and lost a customer than had they not fucked around from the start. Had they paid the $400 from the beginning, we’d have given them much higher preference on our future flights which have been many.