Check out my weekly column over at TravelSort.com. This week I talk about how to get an airline or hotel status match.

I posted a few weeks ago about American Express’ “Small Business Saturday” promotion, offering a $25 statement credit for those that registered and spent $25 at a small business this past Saturday, November 27. Well, if you forgot to visit a small business (or just couldn’t find one… I had trouble too!), they have extended the offer through December 31. Registration is required and limited to the first 300,000 enrollees.

This evening I brought my brother to the airport here in TPA for his flight back home, after he spent a few days with us for Thanksgiving. He happens to be flying tomorrow morning on United as well (the joys of poorly planned travel) out of New York, so we wanted to go ahead and get him checked in for those flights. While the check-in kiosk gladly printed out the boarding passes for his flights tonight, they wouldn’t print out his boarding passes for tomorrow’s flight.

So we asked one of the customer service agents for help. Now, I know the United customer service agents in TPA that work the morning shift really, really well (since I fly out of TPA about twice a week in the morning), though I hardly know the employees that work in the evenings, though I’ve never had a good experience with them.

The customer service agent said she wasn’t allowed to help us and that we needed to use the check-in kiosk. I explained that my brother had a flight tomorrow morning and wanted to check-in, and should be able to, since the flight is within 24 hours. Again, she said she couldn’t help up. I asked why, and she said it was because the kiosk needed to be used.

Just to entertain her, I used the kiosk, and it said to see a customer service representative, so I again explained that to her, to which she responded with “oh, well he’ll need to check in tomorrow morning then.” I’ve gotta be honest, I do have an ulterior motive when I want an agent’s help… I want them to stay employed! Whether or not they want to realize it, the kiosks are replacing them, and will continue to do so as long as they are unhelpful and mutter nothing but “use the kiosk.”

After arguing for a few minutes they did print out the boarding passes, though it took a fight.

Why, oh why, do agents refuse to help customers? And before anyone says it’s United policy, it’s not. I recently followed up with a (relatively) senior management contact on the subject, and he specifically stated that agents were supposed to assist customers on demand, even if the kiosk would have worked. In other words, using a kiosk is a choice, not a requirement to fly.

On the plus side, my brother mentioned that TPA now has a priority security line, which is great news!

It has been a while, but Captain Denny has sent me his December flight schedule to share. Here it is:

12/04 UA943 ORD-LAX 17:30-20:00
12/05 UA324 LAX-IAD 08:31-16:20
12/05 UA729 IAD-TPA 18:16-20:42
12/06 UA465 TPA-DEN 18:35-20:41
12/06 UA419 DEN-PDX 21:39-23:36
12/07 UA464 PDX-ORD 13:22-19:20

12/11 UA943 ORD-LAX 17:30-20:00
12/12 UA239 LAX-SFO 10:31-12:07
12/12 UA760 SFO-ORD 13:12-19:25
12/12 UA640 ORD-PHL 21:00-23:58
12/13 UA563 PHL-ORD 16:39-18:06
12/13 UA515 ORD-SMF 20:30-23:02
12/14 UA332 SMF-ORD 13:17-19:20

12/18 UA839 ORD-LAX 18:31-21:02
12/19 UA347 LAX-BOS 08:35-17:00
12/20 UA881 BOS-ORD 09:02-10:55
12/20 UA107 ORD-LAX 13:06-15:35
12/21 UA944 LAX-ORD 07:00-13:03

12/27 UA524 ORD-BOS 06:00-09:16
12/27 UA785 BOS-DEN 10:06-12:56
12/28 UA227 DEN-LAX 11:47-13:23
12/28 UA118 LAX-SFO 15:27-16:56
12/28 UA573 SFO-SEA 17:54-20:07
12/29 UA916 SEA-IAD 07:33-15:29
12/30 UA865 IAD-ORD 09:53-11:12
12/30 UA728 ORD-IAD 13:06-16:06
12/30 UA249 IAD-ORD 17:11-18:30

Trying to figure out just how many of his flights I can squeeze into my schedule! Hopefully there will be a dinner somewhere in the mix in the next couple of months too.

As Gary blogged about last week, US Airways seems to have started the infamous practice of “Starnet blocking” recently. United pioneered Starnet blocking, the idea of which is simple. There’s a common inventory of Star Alliance award seats (known as Starnet), so what’s an airline to do when they don’t want to pay partner airlines for their award seats? Just block the space, of course! United seems to have stopped this practice in recent months, which is beyond awesome after years of pulling my hair out due to the practice, though it appears that US Airways has taken United’s place.

Based on my experience in the past week or so, a majority of Lufthansa first class award seats have been blocked using US Airways miles. The agents simply can’t “see” the first class inventory. Sadly, the issue isn’t even contained to Lufthansa, though. In the past couple of days I’ve seen US Airways blocking award seats on other airlines, including Turkish and United. Heck, they’re even blocking United domestic coach awards! Fortunately most agents can still be convinced to do a “manual sell,” which will confirm the space.

The fact that US Airways is blocking award space is just so ironic to me, since they’re almost always selling miles for around 1.4 cents each. If they can’t afford to pay their partner airlines at the rate they’re selling miles, maybe they shouldn’t sell so many at such a low cost! Then again, on a per cent basis US Airways is probably getting a lot more for selling miles directly to consumers than most other airlines are with their huge credit card deals, though I assume that the consumers directly buying miles are much, much savvier.