I just put in the wrong credit card information about 7 times and wow... they told me to call an 800# and my reservation was reserved but not ticketed.
Seems to me there are ways around any UA Rules.
Last edited by The_seat_Baron; May 31, 09 at 12:04 am.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_seat_Baron
I was able to hold a reservation to SFO .
I just put in the wrong credit card information about 7 times and wow... they told me to call an 800# and my reservation was reserved but not ticketed.
Seems to me there are ways around any UA Rules.
Excellent! I will need to try this!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ozstamps
Not sure I see in tough times how there is ANY really PLUSSES to UA to take it away?
While I don't like it, it's probably a big gain for them.
I would bet that may held reservations are not ticketed, tying up inventory. If there's only 1 more seat left at that price, and someone holds it and doesn't ticket, another customer could have come by and bought it in the meantime.
Plus with the 24-hour refund policy, there is still time to shop around and secure hotels. Obviously from the cusotmer standpoint, it's more of a pain reconciling a charge and refund if you change your mind.
I don't mind the policy so long as there's a 24-hour refund. Where UA dropped the ball here is not addressing their paper voucher issue. They need to allow holds for paper vouchers, and requiring people to call on the phone for that is a pain.
I would bet that may held reservations are not ticketed, tying up inventory. If there's only 1 more seat left at that price, and someone holds it and doesn't ticket, another customer could have come by and bought it in the meantime.
I was always under the impression that "fares were not guarantied until the ticket was purchased"...
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I was always under the impression that "fares were not guarantied until the ticket was purchased"...
They may say that, but I've had a number of occasions where I have a ticket on hold from the day before, I check the price of the same routing, it's $100 more to reserve today, and I purchase the held itinary at $100 less.
I can recall a time when book and hold was only available to 1K members. When did this change?
At leaast 4 years ago, which was the last time I used book and hold as a 1P, and likely many years before.
I used to book and hold a lot when I would fly rev tix for myself, and award tix for my family (so that I got EQMs, and used up miles as the same time). The theory that if there is saver space, there is likely a good discounted revenue fare on the same flight is not always true. It is going to be trickier to pull that off in the future, but the 24 hour cancellation thing is available, or I can try the below ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_seat_Baron
I was able to hold a reservation to SFO .
I just put in the wrong credit card information about 7 times and wow... they told me to call an 800# and my reservation was reserved but not ticketed.
Seems to me there are ways around any UA Rules.
Great tip, but still a pain when I'm not using a voucher.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZRH2SFO
I was always under the impression that "fares were not guarantied until the ticket was purchased"...
True. Most of the time book and hold gave me original fare, but I recall at least one time, where attempting to ticket the held reservation failed. That's fair.
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I'd like to see the business rationale for this - there must be one but I haven't yet thought of it, unless multitudes of customers are whimsically booking-and-holding and tying up tix that could otherwise be sold.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ZRH2SFO
I was always under the impression that "fares were not guarantied until the ticket was purchased"...
Actually my recollection is the opposite: when a reservation was placed on hold, the fare was held as well.
And that could be the business rationale. I've done this before in the past: hold an itinerary and see if the fare drops the next day. If it does, hold another reservation and cancel the first. Repeat until fare goes up, then ticket the last (and lowest-priced) reservation. I had this going for a good week and a half, for three tickets.
This works best when the airlines are having a big fare war. The airline keeps cutting the price, and the risk for the consumer is that if one doesn't ticket today, the price could go up by a lot tomorrow. The book-and-hold routine got around this nicely.
That said, usually what I used book-and-hold for was to search out the best routes/fares for a family trip, hold the reservations, then go to mrs. snic for final confirmation/discussion/decision. It's actually very useful when there are multiple factors that influence when/where/how much to spend, and these have to be worked through by >1 person before a decision is made.
Now maybe I'll continue with my habits -- but on AA.com.
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I suppose with fewer refare vouchers, there is less reason to book and hold.
I wish UA had just made vouchers electronic in the first place, avoiding the need to schlep to the airport in the first place!
There used to be a trick to get a reservation to hold. One would put in the wrong expiration date or something on the CC, thus causing ual.com to hold the reservation without being able to ticket.
Just to be fair (and to toot my own horn) I mentioned this credit card thing back on page 3!
I don't mind the policy so long as there's a 24-hour refund. Where UA dropped the ball here is not addressing their paper voucher issue. They need to allow holds for paper vouchers, and requiring people to call on the phone for that is a pain.
I used to hold reservations just after 12:00 CST, which gave essentially a 48 hour hold, then book before the hold expired, giving me almost 72 hours to decide for sure on tickets.
Big shame that we're losing this feature - it was extremely useful when trying to coordinate both business and personal travel when multiple people were traveling.
