I could really use some help. My brother and his wife are moving to New Zealand in February. I offered to give them a 60K roundtrip ticket to help them, with the understanding that my brother would use his miles to get the other ticket. I called United and reserved a flight codeshared by Air New Zealand that departs LAX, stops in Fiji, then continues on to Auckland. I was charged 60K miles.

When my brother called to obtain the same itinerary, he was told that he would be charged 80K miles because there is a "stopover" in Fiji. This is ridiculous as he is only accepting this routing because non-stop is not available, and he will only be in Fiji an hour or so before continuing on.

I called the 1K line with him today, hoping that my status would help the situation, but we were told the same thing. Can anyone advise on what to do? Thank you.