Originally Posted by
UAX_Brasilia
It costs merchant's fees when you use a credit card. When you purchase FROM .bomb (aka United), United charges you and United pays the CC fees.
When you used your TA, instead of them charging you and paying the CC fees, they charged you on behalf of United, once again making United pay the CC fees, even though they are not the ones who issued the ticket.
What's the difference to UA (at least in my case)? They get the same amount (same fare with same CC merchant fee). I chatted with my agent and she told me she could not get commission from UA when applying the sales upgrade on the ticket. Therefore, I paid a separate agent fee. It seems to me that booking through TA and booking on .bomb are indifferential to UA as long as UA does not pay the agent commission, which is true in my case. If UA needs to pay the commission to the agent, it then makes sense that UA wants to stop the practice.