United Airlines wants your feedback, housekeys, identity

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Please return your United feedback form to this email address in Nigeria ©

I do a lot of flying. Maybe too much. When you fly a lot you love to have something to do other than watch the latest charming story involving a dog, a misfit child-man and a beautiful, lost but underestimated gen Y girl. I also love a good consumer feedback form. When you are a rant lover like me, you like nothing more than being invited to rant by exactly the person/think you want to rant about. So what could be better when flying domestically in the US but to combine the two – killing time on a long flight on United by filling out a “Survey America”, itself a glorious name for a consumer feedback form, especially if you happen to not be American.

I did not expect to be surprised, let alone outraged by the contents of the survey. How could a consumer survey possibly be bad enough – maybe even dangerous enough – to make you feel anything? Normally you would expect a simple set of questions about your experience using the airline. In exchange for completing the form all you can usually look forward to is a nice smile and a warm feeling of contributing to the data processing workforce stimulus package or, as with United, a nice smile, warm feeling and a slim chance of winning a flight or two.

But United’s "Survey America" contained questions that I am surprised anyone wants to let any company know about them, let alone an airline. Plus the way you post the form back to United guarantees that the whole world will know more about you than you could ever want them to.

Below is a (badly) scanned picture of the worst page, but let me list for you a few of the questions on this survey that United is crazy enough to think consumers would want to answer. On their own (some of) these questions might be ok, but put together they tell United (and a lot of other people) enough about you for United to all but take over your life (ok, maybe that is a bit over the top, but still…).

Selected Questions

18. Including this trip, how many round trips by air have you flown in the past 12 months (by class and airline)?

19. In total how many times in the past 24 months have you flown to Europe, Asia, Latin America?

21. List all the frequent flyer programs you are in and which you are an elite for (check box will all the majors)

22. a) are you Male/Female
b) Age
c) Approximate household income (in thousands)
d) Occupation (with check boxes)
e) Race (with check boxes)

The survey then provides space to fill in your full name, home address, phone, email and other contact details.

And here is the best part. When you fold up the questionnaire to send it to United with the prepaid address on the front, Question 22 (income, age, sex, race) and your name, home address and contact details appear on the back for any and all to see.

Amazing.

If you complete the form you have a slim chance of winning an economy class flight for two to somewhere in the US. But you are almost certain to help a few members of the Russian mafia pay for half a dozen first class flights to Atlantis in The Bahamas, care of your kids’ college fund.

Here is that shot of the back page:

PS – a version of this story first appeared on the Business Of Online Travel blog here.