United Airlines to Russia, would I do it again?

So, a week later, I'm thinking about the trip and how well it went.  I'm looking at all fo the great things that happened.  Sure, we could have done better, but all went really well.  Everything went well, except for one thing--the experience with United Airlines.  So, let me tell a little story--a true story.  So that I don't bore you, I'll stick to some bare facts about our trip.

First, we have always flown Delta.  We've had a great experience with Delta and even one year that our visas were late, Delta waived additional change fees for our passengers who had purchased team tickets.  The process of purchasing group tickets is very easy and the instructions are well laid out and complete.  I almost never have to wait on hold for more than 5 minutes to get a customer service rep.

This year the ticket price was great enough that we decided to fly United Airlines--the largest airline in the world.  The largest airline in the world sure acted akin to the largest car manufacturer in the world.  It was  like a bloated beached whale.  Don't get me wrong.  Many of the individuals who work for United were very helpful, but even many of them told us how bad the systems were. 

Let's start with making the initial reservation.  So, you call and get put on hold.  I think that it will be about ten to fifteen minutes.  Approximately four hours later, I get a real voice.  We go through the process of making the initial group reservation.  I then receive an email with two documents, neither of the proving overly helpful.  Two examples,  one document tells me when the names are due, but not where to send them.  ????  It made me wonder if this was the first time they'd done a group reservation.  In addition, the language about when to provide names was a bit confusing.  There was a deadline to ensure that you didn't lose some of your reservations.  Then there was a second drop dead date.  Interestingly enough, neither of these dates matched the date in the computer when I called.  I also found out that I misunderstood the deadline language.  The message says that the number of tickets reserved would be reduced to ten if not made by a certain date.  As I only had ten travelers, I really didn't care.  So, I set my sights on the second date.  When I called (another two hours on hold), I was informed that I should have provided the names by a different date that was close to the first date in my letter, but not the same.  Of course, I had sent an email earlier in the year to ask a question regarding this and I received an email almost two MONTHS later with my answer.

I was told that I had to complete ticketing that day or I would lose the reservation.  So, I pulled out my trusty credit card and promptly purchased $14,000 worth of plane tickets.  Well, perhaps not so promptly, because when they tried to run the credit cards, their system was down and they took my credit card information and told me that they'd call me if there was a problem. 

Fortunately, there was no problem and we got tickets. 

Of course, that couldn't be the end of it.  We arrived at the airport on the Thursday morning of our flight and found that our flight from Denver to Washington, DC was cancelled.  At first our option was waiting till the next day.   NOT! So, we managed to get everyone on a Lufthansa flight eight hours later. 

I guess that was the end of the terrible stuff with United...

Oh, no, wait.  I forgot to mention the $1,000 deposit that I made to reserve the tickets.  It's now been eight days since I arrived home and my deposit refund has still not shown on my credit card, nor have I seen a check in the mail.  So, now, I may have to spend another 4 hours on hold to get my deposit repaid. 

So, I'm not sure if this is a real airline or not.  Seems to me to be a bad imitation of the old Soviet version of Aeroflot.  I guess it's comforting to know that at least the pilots weren't up front smoking and drinking vodka...or were they?