When I used to work in Detroit’s Renaissance Center, international cellular calls would occasionally appear on my bill.  After way too many calls to AT&T, I finally figured out that whenever I used a certain conference room in Tower 600, my phone would grab the cell tower directly across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.

However, my hassles were nothing compared to a fellow Chicagoan who received a $28,067.31 bill after watching the Chicago Bears-Detroit Lions football game on his PC through his AT&T wireless data card. In the Chicago Sun-Times story, Wayne Burdick said “I was in Miami on Nov. 2 getting ready to go on a Caribbean cruise. I wanted to catch the Bears game before we left port. It was 1 p.m. Florida time. The Bears game was starting. The ship was not leaving Miami until 4 p.m., so I slid in my wireless card and brought up my Slingbox and watched the game on my computer.”

It appears that Burdick’s wireless card associated with the cruise ship’s microcell, which connected to the Internet through a satellite link and billed at international roaming rates.  Even after providing proof that the ship hadn’t left the dock,  the best offer he could get on his own from AT&T was a reduction to $6,000 — still a good bit more than the $220 he normally pays for his unlimited data plan.  When Burdick got The Sun-Times Fixer to shine some media light on the problem, AT&T relented.

As more and more portable devices seamlessly link to cellular data networks, travelers who are even close to an international border need to watch out.

I work very hard not to take out my frustrations with the airlines on the employees — those folks are usually just trying to do their jobs; just trying to get through to the end of the day like the rest of us. Others aren’t so considerate. Flying back from San Francisco last week, the guy next to me at the ticket counter asked the ticket agent at least a half-dozen times to “show me some love” after she told him she couldn’t upgrade his Chicago-London leg. I was impressed by her patience, keeping her cool long after I was ready to tell him to give it up.

However, the gang at Gadling has posted a video of a passenger who refuses to hold it in. Denied boarding on a Cathay Pacific Hong Kong-to-San Francisco flight because she arrived at the gate after the plane door had closed, she has no qualms about putting her dismay on full display.  Here’s the URL to the video on the YouTube site.

I don’t mean to pile on United Airlines, but they do bring it on themselves sometimes. The latest TravelCommons

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talks about how the “friendly skies” of United Airlines have become a bit thread worn — duct tape holding together armrests, seat backs that can’t stay up (which was my experience again on my Monday flight from ORD to SFO). Not surprising since United is the only major US airline without any current orders placed for new aircraft.

Two new news stories illustrate United’s slide. Scanning the front page of yesterday’s Chicago Tribune while sitting forward in my auto-recline seat, I saw an article about a women whose luggage was burned by United.

As Shannon Tadel waited in the Syracuse, N.Y., airport for her flight back to Chicago on Dec. 1, a United Airlines employee approached her and asked if he could speak to her privately.

“He said, ‘Your luggage has been set on fire,’” Tadel recounted later. “I kind of chuckled at him because it was so unbelievable. I was like, ‘Um, OK.’”The employee explained that her bag, containing most of her wardrobe, had been placed too close to the exhaust of a belt loader used to deliver bags to the cargo hold. Someone turned on the equipment and, voila, luggage flambe.

A dumbfounded Tadel boarded the plane, not quite sure what to do. Moments later, the pilot summoned her to the cockpit.

“He said, ‘Do you see that over there? That’s your luggage,’” Tadel recalled.

She looked out the plane’s window and saw a man with a hose and a big plume of smoke.

Tadel says she filed a claim on December 4 and didn’t receive a check from United until last week — after she got the Tribune’s What’s Your Problem columnist involved.

And then comes the story of United’s announcement yesterday that they are closing their complaints call center, telling customers to send a letter or an e-mail instead. United said the reason for this move is to improve customer satisfaction — “We did a lot of research, we looked into it, and people who email or write us are more satisfied with our responses,” said United spokesperson Robin Urbanski. But this is also a cost-cutting move — managing written inquiries is easier and costs less than taking phone calls.

It’s also another push toward self-service — putting the burden of writing up the issue/complaint on the customer rather than having an United employee take if from a phone conversation. In

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, I said “The duct tape holding together the tatty skies are the employees,” that in spite of all the management mistakes, most of the United employees are doing a good job in serving their customers. Yet this latest move by United continues a trend of separating customers from employees — book your tickets on-line, use a kiosk to check in, and now send an e-mail if you have a problem. I can’t wait until they try to replace flight attendants with vending machines.

Recorded in the TravelCommons studios outside of Chicago, back doing my thing to support the travel industry with lots of travel in January. We talk about some recent TSA observations, good and bad; my latest spin of the “travel roulette” wheel, trading the plane for a train in an East Coast snow storm; a look back at last year’s travel courtesy of Dopplr’s Personal Annual Report; and being saved by duct tape while flying the tatty skies of United. Here’s a direct link to the podcast file.

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