MilesBuzz! - United say upgrading with Lufthansa is a "gamble" (?!)

Here is the situation:

I purchase a ticket on LH for a trip from LAX-MUN. I then call LH and ask them if there is upgrades available in Business Class. They said that there were but I did not have the right type of coach fare to upgrade. They told me I needed a B fare in coach and that it would cost me $150 more. I bought it and then asked them about the upgrade. They said yes, it was available. Then they transfered me to their awards department and then they asked me to claim an award with UA. I claimed the award but UA said they had to "request" the upgrade. Funny, on AA they can just upgrade on a partner right over the phone, no waiting.

A week goes by then I call UA. They said that LH denied the upgrade! I explained to UA what I went through about paying more money and how LH said the upgrade was available at that time. They said it was a "gamble" with LH on the upgrade and they were sorry I was out $150. I said what if I would have spent $2000 from Business Class to have a fare that qualifies for a First Class upgrade.....would I have gambled and lost 2K? They said hmmmm.. that would be a problem. UA is basically telling me they can not do anything. LH will not refund the $150.

Flyer Talkers please come to my rescue and advise me!!!

[This message has been edited by CART_Flagman (edited 08-27-2001).]

Well NORMALLY someone would suggest you post this in the UNITED Forum. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif A Moderator will however probably shortly move this without trace to the Aero Mexico Forum for you without further notice. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Seriously - posting this on the Lufthansa Forum surely will elicit some well researched answer here?

When upgrading with United miles on LH, I have always been forced to gamble on the availibility of upgrad seats. This usually takes a few days for LH to "release seats" and fortunately i have been blessed. Still the anxiety of paying the extra money for an upgradable fare and ponying up the miles out of my United account doesn't seem fair, but what can one do. If I were in your position I would call Untied and LH Milage Plus customer service and "discuss" with a supervisor the "bait and switch" tactics that they are employing are unfair business practices. Good luck, hopefully you will find an understanding representative from LH to correct this somewhat fradulant transaction.

Ihave had good luck upgrading LH flights using United miles, but I have never had this happen in advance. You have to get United to issue a paper certificate. United will hassle you about this and tell you that they don't want to issue the paper certificate unless the award is confirmed. Unfortunately, I have never been able to get the award confirmed in advance. Thus, what you have to do is convince United to send the upgrade certificate while waiting for them to find out whether the upgrade will clear. United will tell you that you cannot use the certificate if the upgrade did not clear in advance. I have had good luck bringing the certificate to the airport and getting upgraded. I do think that it is odd they made you buy a B ticket. As I remember (but I am not 100% sure about this) they will charge you 10K miles if the ticket is B or Y and they will charge 20K miles if it is a more discounted ticket. Anyway, my reccomendation is to get the paper upgrade certificates you need in advance from United and bring them to the airport to get upgraded. My old travel agent used to take care of this for me, but now that we have a new corporate travel agency, I don't know if this will go as smooth the next time.

Sorry to hear about this - I seem to be blessed with this as the only time I ever had a problem upgrading on LH via UA was when I forgot my cert!!! In that case I bought a C class ticket, traveled to my destination, produced the cert and was refunded from C to B.... the moral of the story.... keep calling till you get a good agent.

This topic is well discussed on the LH board.

Hey, I fly Delta, so this sounds like standard business to me. So it could be worse. On Delta, the cheapest fares aren't upgradeable with segment upgrades -- and you can't tell until 1-3 days ahead of time, usually, if you can get the upgrade. So you have to pay extra and cross your fingers.

Sounds like the same thing, except for the fact that they lied to you about it.

Thanks to all that replied. LH says there is still upgrade seats available and for me to ask United to re-submit the request.

Ho-Hum!

Continued good luck with your seat upgrades. Once they are available to you i strongly suggest that you immediaely get seat assignments. Again, good luck.

The bottom line: Forget LH and fly UA - better C-seats anyway.
(Still wishing you the best luck on your upgrade coming thru!)

Why on earth is THIS off -topic thread allowed to stay for days here by Dos Moderators and not be moved to the LH board?

because (I think) the UA board is still down, and the question is about using UA MIleage Plus miles (to upgrade on LH).