5khours

Might be time to move. One more straw will just about do it.

UAgeek71

I'm not at all saying I like this change - It is a very poor decision on a lot of fronts, as other have stated in the 23 previous pages.


However - just a small thought for everyone.

Let's for argument sake assign truth to the claims that most FT members speculate about, even though not fully proven, that XN=X, RN=R, and IN=I.

Let's also take a leap of faith that Expert Flyer will still have access to R,I, and X inventory via GDS, and not web scrape, as seeming to be confirmed in the email they sent, as well as other's statements here.

We will also speculate Expert Flyer gets GDS to tell them R, I, or X >0 and we use the first assumption that *N=X, I, R inventory - then the conclusion we could draw is that there is not any significant functional differences from Expert Flyer on Friday, compared to today.


Of course this all goes out the window when UA IT and Inventory Management actually, on a regular basis have RN>R, IN>I, and XN>X - but that is another issue all together.

bseller

I don't believe that R is available via GDS.

Dave

sbm12

Nope...same exact behavior as the companies which accessed account balances by scraping.

They haven't really said that in a few years now, mostly because (as this thread and a few others recently have made abundantly clear) it is simply not true. It used to be. It no longer is.
KVS "scrapes" locally rather than from a server. That's the basic difference. It makes stopping KVS very, very, very difficult.

There is overwhelming evidence that things have changed since 2008.
It is more about processing power and query handling than data transfer bandwidth. Each of the automated queries takes resources. Running 7 days worth of queries in the same amount of time as 1 human-issued query uses a lot more processing power. Factor in all the alert queries which are run without user interaction and the load placed on the UA systems is much higher than without the scraping in place.

:-:
The data in question is not published in a GDS.
Yup...still works great: http://blog.wandr.me/2011/07/expert-...ntinental-com/
Things have changed over the years. It wasn't always this way.
Almost as jaw-dropping as the conclusion you jumped to which ignores the real cost of the queries.
@:-)
What did you expect? You complained to UA about a company they have no business relationship with. They told you to speak with the people who are responsible for the product you're having trouble with. That shouldn't be a surprise.

Kacee

This is completely wrong.

First of all, XN is regularly higher than X. So losing XN does mean something. Unlike losing IN, which is meaningless, since IN is never greater than I.

Further, the report is that EF will lose all upgrade inventory data - R, RN, and ON. I don't know where you got the idea EF will continue to have access to R. If that were the case, this thread would not already be 25 pages long.

sabbasolo

It's not the internet bandwidth, it is the database bandwidth. When you use the EF +/- feature, it is doing many searches in parallel, and displaying the results on one screen.

Consider a provider who says "easier to use - we will download from your bank an up to date statement every 5 minutes, compare it to see changes, and notify you when a new charge is made." Obviously the bank will say that is not reasonable use.

That is a very inefficient and expensive way to get the data. SImilarly, EF method is clearly creating significant load on UA IT systems, compared to the resulting data.

To a technical IT person, this is obvious. There are more efficient ways to get the data, and you can argue that UA should work on that, but it is quite reasonable to me to block the automatic repeated frequent wide searches.

hamburgoflyer

Most likely because such is quite rare.
I just got back from London using r-space that I had booked
a few weeks in advance after looking through the various
gateways doing non-stops to Heathrow across 2 or 3 weeks
worth of flights.

Takes (soon took) just a few minutes with EF to check this but
maybe an hour per search via united.com (which I will not try).

FWAAA

Does UA's Expert Mode permit searches that would confirm that there are nine R upgrade seats available? I just ran several searches on EF for R/RN inventory for various UA international flights and for some flights, EF returned R9, RN9. That maximum of nine matches the maximum inventory that is displayed on the GDS for UA inventory buckets.

craz

When Hertz and Avis etc etc stopped Auto Slash from being to rebook you at a new lower rate, did everyone simply stop using those companys? I bet not 1 person changed who they rent with.

EF isnt that old what did everyone do before they came on the scene? You will simply have to go back to what you once did.

I was never a member of EF either for free or paid. Over the yrs Ive flown on countless award tkts and usually found it all on PMCO or PMUA searching manually. It seems thats what everyone will have to do once again., no more short cuts for those willing to pay for it.

I find it odd that EF hasnt posted to this thread and informing everyone of the facts as they see it.

Sorry but its great to know that the playing field is gonna be alot more level going forward

Passmethesickbag

A lot of flew with pmUA, where the upgrade process was fair, transparent, and proceeded in real-time without shenanigans or priority for TOD. Under such circumstances, the only point in checking was at the booking stage, if you were flexible, to pick any option where upgrade space was already available for instant confirmation. The 1k agents were very happy to help. If no upgradable space was available at the time of booking, we could relax in the knowledge that UA would process the upgrade at any point up until departure if space became available. So yes, I think we'd be very happy to take your advice if there was a way of going back.

unavaca

Transparent? Ha. There was no way to see your waitlist position for an upgrade after the flight went to airport control whereas now we have a real-time waitlist available on your phone, online, and at the gate. Huge improvement over the old days. Yes, I was exclusively a PMUA flier.

Passmethesickbag

You are right, transparency is not the correct word - I should have said robustness (although the current "transparency" is somewhat belied by the existence of two waiting lists, one visible and one invisible, with an intransparent relationship between them). With pmUA you could be confident that you would not drop off the waitlist, or be bypassed by a TOD sale. Moreover, the waitlist did not close 24 hours before departure.

FolliesFlyer

The problem is the design architecture. UA updates thousands of data points and the only way an outsider (EF) can see what has changed to is query point by point. So EF or KVS keeps querying the same points over and over only to learn that most have not changed. If UA released all the changes in bulk to EF, they wouldn't have to hit the DB over and over.

RockinRon

With the chatter on going back to using Expert Mode I am seeing that I have to login and modify my account preferences with each visit to the web site. Is that normal? It's not an attribute I can set once and then have it always be there?

star_world

You only have to turn it on once. But your account has to be "fully" logged in to use it - you need to enter your username and password. If you go to the United website, even if your name is on the top-right, you have to click on a reservation or view your full MP account details, fill in your username and password and then it will work for that session.