But that’s not what this post is all about, cause no one wants to hear about how I’m enjoying a nice quiet seven beers while waiting for my plane, no, whatdadeucer’s want the rage! And by gum, I aim to deliver!
No, this story takes places in a little country off the Indian Ocean, ironically called…India, where a handful of its hardworking citizens employed as United customer service agents are about to get a nasty phone visit from your pal, the nefarious Mr. Question Mark (See ?).
So as a loyal United Mileage Plus customer, you have two phone choices 
on how to reserve your airfare, you can (A) attempt a series of phonetic arguments with a voice recognition automated robot commanding data flow over thousands of flights covering the globe all operating with the computing capacity of a 1980 Speak N’ Spell, or (B) try your luck with a staff of hundreds of dedicated Indian flight reservation agents with a minimal grasp of the English language.
After the sophisticated, top of the line robot botched recognition of the word “Yes” five times in a row (I shit you not), I frantically began jamming the 0 key on my phone and requested an agent, it got that one right away, go figure. Soon I was basking in the 64 bitrate muzac version of United’s classical music theme, Rhapsody in Blue, gloriously waiting on hold, awash on a sea of potential disapointment only a seasoned veteran of the customer service battlefield could anticipate. Oh the possibilities…
In the past I enjoyed such experiences with Indian United customer service as, attempting to change my flight to New Orleans at the outbreak of Hurricane Katrina, for some reason, this request was unfathomable, even as FEMA was searching for their ass with two hands in an attempt to deliver water to the city (it took them 5 days, maybe I should have bought some Aquafina and went anyway, could have sold that shit at a premium). That one cumulated in a shouting match with a supervisor with a heavy accent going by the dubious moniker John Smith that eventually, after terrifying my work cubemates, resulted in a full refund of my miles and a free roundtrip domestic flight. Who says it doesn’t pay to Hulk out every once and awhile 
(coming soon…the Seagate Chronicles!)?
So I’ll skip the first half dozen calls on this particular occasion that ended in total frustration after agent after agent tried to pander a 430am flight with six connections from one adjacent state to another, only to finally cough up the semi-decent late night direct flight that I reserved, and then mysteriously lost due to agent ineptitude. Ive never had to spell my first name more times in my life, but then, there’s Honey Kettle who challenged the title, and lost!
No, this is about the final epic phone call to Indian customer service to confirm my held reservation that transformed the mild-mannered ? into his green muscled nemesis that you love to read about. When I called in this penultimate time I was calm and reserved at first, basking in the reassurance that my reservation was safe. I got a pleasant agent who asked for my first name three times, stepped me slowly through the 20 minute confirmation process, only to hit me with an $75 fee for confirming my reservation on the 6th day before the flight. Keep in my mind, none of the 12 other representatives and supervisors told me about this bullshit charge. The agent stammers then puts me on hold to ask his supervisor to override the charge, based on no one informing me of this in the multiple times I called in before. More muzac.
10 minutes pass and guess what, he’s so sorry, so I ask for his boss. Brother’s gonna work it out. 10 more minutes, I fucking hate Gershwin so much now. I get the inflexible arrogant supervisor who tells me I have two options, option (A) go back through the Apple 2C robot and theoritically not get charged (yeah right, I know a ploy to dump a dissatisfied caller from a mile off), 
or option (B) take a 75 doller voucher to offset the cost of the charge. Why can’t just take the original charge off? Why can’t he provide better service than a robot? He doesn’t know, he probably hasn’t seen Terminator, the machines will rise motherfucker, they will rise. Guess where your job is going? As soon as they upgrade to a 386, you guys are fucked.
The wheels are turning, I take the voucher. I call back and get a representative and use the voucher to reverse the original charge. Wow. Really was that so hard? For Indian customer service, apparently so.
Thank you, come again.
