oregondiver

Last year we booked a trip to Bonaire (using miles) and we went online a few months before flying and saw that United had moved our connection up to a DAY before we even go there. No notice...we just accidentally found it when reviewing our flight info. Got everything fixed, had great time in Bonaire!

Fast forward to today. We bought tickets to Caymans a few months ago. Today we checked our flights (just to confirm) and found out United moved our conntection to leaving 2 hours before we arrived in Houston (for our return flight home). We used $300 voucher for each ticket and paid for the remaining cost.

Calling united today, they tell us there are no flights home (from Houston) that day, so we would need to stay the night in Houston before heading home. So we asked about refunding and then we would book another ticket and they told us we can't get the vouchers back since they had already been "booked".

It isn't our fault we can't use the flights we originally booked, United moved the flight (connection) on us so we can't use our originally booked itinerary. It doesn't exist anymore. Is this logical? We don't get to re-use the voucher since WE are cancelling the booking? Seems totally assbackwards since United moved our flights so we couldn't use it.

Suggestions on how to resolve? We can't change dates (other than shifting 1 day forward) since others are joining us in Caymans based on original itinerary.

Thank you oh wise FT members!

GrizShel

I was doing a search to try to find out if United had kept their policy of making vouchers completely vanish once they are applied to a ticket, and it sounds like from your post they have. But your situation presents a more compelling argument of the unfairness of this policy. If anyone deserves to get the value of a voucher back, you do.

How did this turn out?

garykung

It depends on what kind of voucher you have used.

Type A ecert (start with 1016, no letter) - you may need to talk to Customer Relations.

Type B VDB - it is a credit, you will be allowed to reuse.

ETC (Mixture of numbers and letters) - see Type B.

dsauch

Ive used a domestic only e-cert on a flight I had to cancel.
Emailed to CS and got a new cert replacement - good on any flight!

oblisk

After United cxl'ed a flight for mx/irrops two weeks ago on me resulting in a trip in vain cancellation. I had to make 3 different calls until a supervisor would let me rebook the trip for a different weekend without paying anything since my 250$ e-cert reduced my fare basis substantially.

Not a fight I should have to go through.

JFKSFOLAX_friend

I could see this being hell to successfully resolve. Clearly you should be able to reuse the vouchers. But, given UA's current state of affairs, I could see this taking many phone calls and many hours to resolve.