SFOTurtle

I'm well aware of the many threads on the filtering of *A awards on other carriers when trying to redeem UA MP miles. What just happened to me is something worse in my view, and the blame appears to lay both with UA and also NH in this case. Apologies for the length of this email.

Three days ago I spent an hour on the phone making an award reservation for me and my fiancee in C class to Asia for next spring (of course, I had to call back twice to get an agent that seemed somewhat competent after the first two agents said that they didn't think that NH operated the route). The outbound segment was on NH from SFO-NRT with travel on to BKK on Thai. The return was from HKG-YVR-SFO on AC. All segments had C availability for two, except there was only one C seat on the HKG-YVR flight. Because of this, the reservations agent said she had to do two different PNRs, with my fiancee's a paper ticket because the miles were coming from my account. My cc was charged (as it turns out, only for my pnr), the miles were deducted, and I received a confirming email for my reservation. I assumed that my fiancee would receive the ticket in the mail.

Today, I went on-line to check her reservation just to make sure it all looked good (yes, I know, I should have done this the next day, but it was 11:30 p.m. and I got side-tracked the next day). Her reservation says it is confirmed, great, fine. The bad news is that there is no SFO-NRT leg showing at all for hers. I call UA immediately, and here begins the BS.

First, the agent tells me that NH has cancelled the flight altogether, so she needs to put me on hold to figure out what alternative arrangements they can make. I don't buy this for a hearbeat, so I immediately go to ANA's website which shows that the flight is still there and also has F and C award seats. Any UA's website still shows me as being booked on that flight. After 20 minutes of being on hold, the agent comes back and says that they have put both of us on a flight operated by UA that leaves SFO 30 mins later (making the connection in NRT pretty tight for my liking, especially with weather delays in the spring here). I then asked/told her that NH had not cancelled the flight, correct? The agent then changed her story and said it wasn't, but NH has cancelled out both of our award reservations, and they are not allowing any award seats in business at this time for other *A members, but only for NH members. It turns out that they have not charged my cc for her reservation, although they have for mine. She says that the reason I was on hold for 20 minutes is because they had contacted NH to see if they would reinstate both of our reservations, but NH said no. After about 10 mins of her trying to find alternative seats on NH, she finally says that they will escalate this again to NH, but I would need to call back on Monday to see if we have had any luck talking with NH, something about NH's office somewhere not being open until Monday. I then asked to speak to a supervisor.

After waiting five minutes, the supervisor -- maybe the rudest person I've ever spoken with at UA -- comes on and immediately says to me in a most unfriendly tone, "all we can do is offer you seats on the UA flight, nothing else." I said I was told that someone would be contacting NH on Monday to escalate my request, and he says no, we can't do that. I asked, "you can't, or you won't?" A: [repeats same mantra -- all we can do ...] Q: Why can't you speak to someone live at NH? A: same response, even interrupting me while I'm asking my questions. He refused to answer why. He also said that no one had spoken to NH while I was on hold, directly contradicting what the previous agent had said. The last twist -- he says that I still have *my* reservation on NH, despite what the first agent had said.

The supervisor then demanded that I make a decision *immediately* as to whether I would change both reservations to the UA flight, or then have *all* of the other segments for my fiancee cancelled. I then demanded to know why no one at UA had contacted me about this for the past three days, and this problem was only discovered by me, and yet he has the chutzpah to demand that I make a decision immediately or else lose all of my other supposedly "confirmed" award space!? And this from a supervisor who supposedly is trained in customer relations?

I know a lot of people on this board might just say, "that's today's UA" and "why didn't you just take the seats on the UA flight?" I specifically booked this itinerary so that I could fly NH because its product is far superior to UA C. I spent an hour on the phone doing this earlier this week, and a lot of other time using the ANA tool researching options for this trip. Right now, the SFO-NRT flight on UA is a 777, of which none have the new C and the likelihood of getting that next spring isn't very high unless you have the mentality of a die-hard United apologist. I've flown on UA int'l C many times with the old hard product, and it is not on par with NH C in my view. If I knew that this would be the new C product, then I would be fine with the change.

But the bigger points here are that NH unilaterally and without notice refused to honor a *A award that by all reasonable accounts had been confirmed -- or at least that's what the agent told me 3 nights ago when the 180 (90 x 2) K miles were deducted; UA hadn't even bothered to contact me to inform me of this; and now UA doesn't care enough to ask NH to abide by the rules (which probably are broken every day anyway) and is making up lies and changing stories with each question I ask.

Sorry for the long rant. I'm wondering if others have faced the same predicament, and whether anyone has had any success by pursuing this. ave any recourse?