Kayak yielding cheaper ticket on United.com than United.com search
So I have generally stopped checking Kayak before booking my flights because I always book United these days. With the 1K 100% bonus miles the value of the additional miles from an HKG-ORD ticket almost always offsets any cash savings from flying a different airline (which is often very little if anything at all).
However I am going to have to go back to searching Kayak, because when I do a "lowest available fare" search tonight on United.com Hong Kong to Chicago (departing 1/19 returning 1/28) I get $1453 via Newark, while Kayak yields a ticket via Tokyo and Seattle for $1178. Not exactly a trivial difference, and the 2-stop cheaper flight is actually an hour shorter in total time. The Kayak link just goes straight to the United website, and the ticket shows up just fine there. But this ticket cannot by found by searching directly on United.com. What the hell? Are there other tricks to find lower fares? This just makes me feel like I need to spend more time on the already laborious process of ticket booking.
On another note, they are still screwing up the upgrade process. Wednesday night I bought a ticket (which I have since cancelled) for Friday travel HKG-ORD. I was surprised to see RN=3 on this normally very difficult route/day, and jumped on it planning to GPU. But it took a few minutes to ticket, so I went to dinner, came back, and found RN=0. Sure it's my fault for going to dinner, just saying, this was clearly not supposed to be RN=3 in the first place, because there turns out to be no space in business whatsoever, and a long airport waitlist when I checked in today. I'm sure it was just something weird in their computer system causing a few hours of unintentional availability. Three lucky people may have jumped ahead in line after getting an EF alert, or it may have just disappeared on its own.
I think sbm12 has posted about this previously — united.com will not show you two-stop connections even if they are much cheaper than the available one-stop connections.
This has got to be a deliberate business decision on United's part. Other booking engines are perfectly capable of delivering fare solutions with more convoluted itineraries rapidly and accurately.
Last edited by mherdeg; Jan 17, 13 at 7:45 am..
Reason: typo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DeaconFlyer
Which makes booking award tickets much easier.
It does. Thankfully there is a silver lining or two in the dark ominous cloud.
Though honestly, I'd give back online partner award availability if I could get back the time I waste routinely with this airline on other, routine matters.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HKChicago
So I have generally stopped checking Kayak before booking my flights because I always book United these days.
Preferring to fly UA is not a reason to shun Kayak and other exterior search engines. I find the UA engine fails to display up to half the options available (UA and partners), UA and non-UA, one-stop and two-stop. Kayak, Expedia, and others will expose better and often cheaper itineraries. But I don't know if the lame UA engine is deliberately engineered to limit customers' options or just a mess.
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This is not a technology issue. It is absolutely a business practice that the company has instituted. I have an open conversation with them still running right now based on my initial research about "hiding" multiple connections and they have essentially acknowledged that they are doing it on purpose.
It isn't because the systems cannot show the other options; it is because the business does not want them to.
my booking "engine" now is Matrix -> Kayak -> .bomb. sad that it takes me three websites to get to what i want, but each has their advantages and it really doesn't take me that terribly much longer and i almost always end up with the most PQMs allowed in the routing code, given the amount of time i have available to get from A-B. there are other UA related things that are far more aggravating on a day to day basis than not showing 2 stop itins.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sbm12
This is not a technology issue. It is absolutely a business practice that the company has instituted. I have an open conversation with them still running right now based on my initial research about "hiding" multiple connections and they have essentially acknowledged that they are doing it on purpose.
It isn't because the systems cannot show the other options; it is because the business does not want them to.
Interesting. I'd be curious to see what they say publicly if you're able to write an article about it.
What I'd be curious to understand is why the change flights interface shows even fewer results than a new flight search. I can't imagine that's also deliberate -- they want to give people who change tickets even fewer choices?
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You are in control of what you pay and if you want the upgrade. Granted, it is complex to navigate, but just use ITA --> Hipmunk --> .bomb. If you see RN=3 it is your choice whether you want to force the upgrade through or not.
Arguably a more transparent process would lead to a system where you would have a lower chance of getting that upgrade. FTers are at an information advantage and I for one intend to use it. That's why I'm on FT in the first place.
If they want to be transparent about this, fine, but it doesn't say anywhere that it is not showing two-stop itineraries, and the one-stop itin to through Newark that takes a LONGER total time is marked with a big green stamp saying "lowest available fare" even though there is a $300 cheaper fare with shorter travel time bookable on their own website. Purely false advertising.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HKChicago
If they want to be transparent about this, fine, but it doesn't say anywhere that it is not showing two-stop itineraries, and the one-stop itin to through Newark that takes a LONGER total time is marked with a big green stamp saying "lowest available fare" even though there is a $300 cheaper fare with shorter travel time bookable on their own website. Purely false advertising.
That depends on how you define "fare." The HKG-ORD fare could be one fare, with a connection in EWR. The two-stop itinerary, may actually be two fares sold together. For example, an HKG-NRT fare and an NRT-ORD or HKG-SEA or SEA-ORD. These are important fare construction factors, which clearly change pricing.
Use Hipmunk. It is fab. You can select what you want there and it will take you directly to book on United bypassing all their nonsense. You can use most of the ITA codes on Hipmunk to force it to show what you want.
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I know this isn't exactly the same situation, but my travel agent was unable to book various flights for me shown on ITA, LH.com, and other sites using UA. She said that they cannot construct anything these days, only take what the system gives them. I had already had her do a fair bit of looking so I felt like I didn't want to push the point but it was really frustrating. I understand this is CO's business decision but I don't like it (and I was actually trying to get a more expensive fare class in order to use upgrade instruments). Sounds like Kayak is the way to go--can they search for specific fare classes?
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From some previous discussion:
Quote:
Originally Posted by mherdeg
You might try something I've done lately, which is
represent the exact trip I want using the ITA route language, e.g. from xxx:: ua123 ua456 to: yyy:: ua789,
look up that exact itinerary on hipmunk.com, which accepts ITA route language and books directly on united.com,
assuming Hipmunk finds and prices the trip (legal but unusual connection, no phantom availability discrepancy between ITA/UA) click through from hipmunk to united.com's purchase page,
put the reservation on hold with "ticket by phone",
call United Web Support and ask to use an e-cert on a trip that's on hold.
My experience has been that if ITA says a UA fare is legit, and if the availability is still there, you can coax the united.com reservation engine to price the trip only by using intermediaries (kayak is very crude, hipmunk is a bit more refined).
