boat9781

Hi all,

Just got off the phone with a UA reservations agent who canceled my trip today for no reason whatsoever. I have my boarding passes and was about to head to the airport, but she said, "don't even try because they're not valid" ..."the ticket was used and there is no value." Let me explain.

I booked two same-day roundtrip itineraries under one PNR. I've already flown the first roundtrip, and today I was going to fly the second roundtrip. Now, perhaps booking this under one PNR was a bad call, but there's nothing inherently against the rules so far as how I booked it; I just didn't want to have to go through the booking process twice!

Anyway, I was calling to see if I could get on an earlier flight today on the outbound, and the agent was completely confused. She kept repeating "the ticket has been used and there is no value" again and again. She just couldn't comprehend that you can have more than one round trip in a PNR. She then canceled the flights for today and said "we can rebook this now but obviously the price is going to much higher."

Tried reservations 3 more times to see if someone could put the itinerary back together, but they keep quoting that the ticket has no value.

What the?? Looks like I won't be requalifying for 1K today as I had hoped.

Any advice?

demkr

How did you book two round trips in one PNR? Was it a multi city trip? I guess that's the operative question is why you felt the need to book it on one PNR.

boat9781

Yes. And so far as why I felt the need, not being rude, but does it matter here? I mean, is it against the rules? I just didn't want to go through the booking process twice! Maybe that's bizarre, but it was just quicker at the time.

lax2010

Perhaps the biggest mistake was calling UA in the first place! I would love to learn how to book two RT flights on the same PNR sometimes. It wasn't easy as the UA booking engine always rejected my attempts!

Michael El

Multiple destination reservations happen all of the time. Did you check your confirmation number on United.com before or after calling to see if you had seats etc.?

demkr

I've never heard of anybody doing that unless they had a specific reason to do so.

boat9781

Indeed, and I provided one.

demkr

Something is not adding up to me.

You were calling and she cancelled your ticket on the spot? I guess we're just trying to understand. Typically, people book multi city itineraries with a bunch of one ways into one PNR. I've never heard of putting two separate itineraries into one ticket. I don't think there's anything *wrong* or rule-breaking with doing that.

Are you able to show your receipt and ask why they feel the ticket has no value if the flight has already been taken?

It seems like these would be the obvious questions to ask.

mherdeg

Did you pay the correct price for the two trips? That is, if you look at your e-ticket online at, say, saudiairlines.com, do you in fact see a fare construction which correctly shows you ticketed to travel to visit all the places you visited, plus a list of destinations that matches the e-ticket you expect?

If so, then UA has broken its contract of carriage — you're well within your rights to sue them for breach of contract. Good luck figuring out how to do that, calculating your actual damages, etc. Should be an open-and-shut case. Please let us know how it works out.

demkr

I would nicely ask the agent to simply look at the receipt, be made aware of that its a multi city itinerary, and ask her to explain how the receipt has no value, when X amount of segments have yet to be flown.

That being said, your multi city itinerary should have one-ways and not round-trip. They are set up as Destination 1, Destination 2, and Destination 3. So yours has 4 destinations, so it should be very clear to the agent that your itinerary is not complete.

Was the itinerary cancelled before you called the agent?

boat9781

No, I understand, demkr, thanks for posing these questions.

I do have the original receipt that was emailed to me. Maybe that could help? I also have all sets of boarding passes, though I'm not sure if that helps here.

Either way, I'm definitely not going to book like this again. And really, I probably don't even save that much time having to click through all the airports/multi-city windows if I just book roundtrips as their own PNR!

Do you think I should keep trying reservations, or perhaps head to the airport?

demkr

The original receipt should be accessible by the phone agent. i would try another phone agent.

I guess they are claiming it's not "cancelled" its just "complete"? Its probably yet another one of their famous tech glitches.

BTW, I was just curious as to the Multi City thing, was not trying to bombard you with questions. Good luck!

lax2010

OTOH, since you already printed out your boarding pass, why not just show up at the gate and see how it goes? What else could possibly go wrong?

boat9781

Some more answers to these helpful questions:

When I checked in online this morning, I had been upgraded on a couple of my segments, so that was good, and it was showing the usual reservation with the "Upgrade Confirmed" checks on United.com, so I can assume it wasn't canceled at that point. I have the boarding passes sitting here on my desk.

The reservations agent canceled my ticket when I called her, so it makes sense that when I input the reservation on United.com I get a message saying:
I googled how to do the Saudia eticket lookup, went to the site and inputted my eticket #, and the entire itinerary comes up (cool!), but bizarely, and I don't know how this is possible, it says FLOWN next to the segments I was going to fly today?! Obviously that isn't true.

So far as fare construction, I don't really understand it, but I'm pasting it here:

All I know is I had booked 2x SFO-IAH-PDX-IAH-SFO, flew one, and was going to fly the second one today, but both roundtrips were on one PNR.

Hoping you guys can make sense of this for me. Am I in the wrong, or did UA screw up? And if they did, what would you suggest so far as next steps?

Thanks everyone.

WineCountryUA

Unclear in reading but have you talked to a second agent yet? It is clear the first agent was confused by the odd ball nature of the ticket.

bad idea -- the gate agent will not have time to deal with the issue and this appraoch has the lowest possibly chance of success.