I had assumed that this is precisely what KVS was already doing. If it scrapes united.com, there's no way UA is going to stop it without a huge amount of IT expertise which we know they don't have.
Ok, I'll ask. What's KVS?
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Stephen S Hultquist
Professional speaker, business and technology consultant, author... traveler...
Its a desktop-based inventory search tool. Its basically a downloadable application like expertflyer which is cheaper and (at time of posting) still has access to UA award/upgrade information.
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164,373Lifetime Miles and counting... It's time to fly.
Its a desktop-based inventory search tool. Its basically a downloadable application like expertflyer which is cheaper and (at time of posting) still has access to UA award/upgrade information.
was trying to book the wife and kid to kona with an upgrade-- previously the X class showed up on alerts a couple days ahead of flights which worked out.
no can do now.
kind of a joke anyway, as I called UA and was told there were no upgrades available to HI until September (and none in October or November either)
Where is the data publicly available? I assumed that EF was licensing it from UA. If you say it's still publicly available, we should be able to access it somehow, right?
Log-into MP/united.com (so pseudo-public -- need an account)
set your profile to Expert mode
Start a dummy Standard Award booking for the desired date/segments
Hover the mouse over the "Flight Info", the fare codes & quantities will become visible
However you have to do this one at a time and are unable to set any automatic alerts
We were told by United that no other service or website outside of the United call center and United.com is authorized to have access to their award and upgrade information.
Where is the data publicly available? I assumed that EF was licensing it from UA. If you say it's still publicly available, we should be able to access it somehow, right?
Do a dummy award booking. Choose "Book with Miles" (make sure it's a Standard Award, not Saver), then hover mouse over "Flight info"
Programs: UA 1K, NW/DL Gold, Red Carp Club, Priority Pass, CLEAR (rip), Hertz 5*, Hyatt Gold
Posts: 3,877
Quote:
Originally Posted by noah
I can't help but think that this is all related to the issue of StarNet blocking and United's increasing displeasure with it's customers having access to more data than their own employees and therefore our ability to put the pieces together to understand how they're truly limiting awards and upgrades. If they take the info away from us, we're left to our own conclusions, but can no longer back it up with data. Major thumbs down.
But the data removed was about UA awards, so it should have nothing to do with Starnet. When customers know more than agents about award availability on partners, it's from using the ANA tool or AC tool, not EF...EF only showed the same UA award info that .bomb had.
So if UA didn't want customers to have the info, they could have just pulled it from .bomb (and EF would have nothing to display either)...there would have been no need to call EF and tell them to take it down, while leaving it up on .bomb.
And since UA can't control ANA and its tool, which is the main source of info about *A awards, this censorship of EF doesn't seem to have anything to do with Starnet blocking. More like mysterious decisionmaking by a random UA exec that doesn't even serve a rational business purpose!
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Also, as someone already implied, this seems like a perfect opportunity for United PR to chime in. I realize his/her/their role is not to address individual travel problems or questions, but what about relatively significant (to FTers anyway) corporate policy shifts that have no obvious explanation?
Yes, and I also got an email from EF. Herer's the 1st paragraph:
Quote:
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately United award & upgrade information
will be no longer available on ExpertFlyer.com. This morning we received a
call from United asking us to remove the UA award and upgrade data. Since
we believe it is important to maintain an amicable relationship with the
airlines, we have complied with their request.
