I'd like to pass along my experience to make sure that ticketing agents have the correct information in light of these new rules effective June 15. A heads up that agents either don't have the new rules at their disposal or don't understand them, and/or don't care to learn them.

I am a 1P and had an *A award issued months ago, well before June 15. I just spent an hour on the phone with a UA rep making a routing and airline change to this award for travel a little over a week from now. Most of this time was spent waiting for the agent to speak with her supervisor about the fee.

The agent was originally -- and was still to the end of our call -- adamant that the fee for this change was $150. She explained that, notwithstanding the new rules that are posted on UA.com and discussed endlessly on this thread, because my award was issued prior to June 15, that any routing or carrier change would result in a $150 fee. I asked her to review the rules on the website that clearly provide that this should now only be a $75 fee for all MP members other than 1K/GS, but she said "those didn't matter" and that the only rules that matter are those that she had in front of her, and those rules imposed a $150 change fee for any change to an award made prior to June 15 -- period.

I asked her to speak to her supervisor (I would have hung up, but I was concerned that she had pulled award space already that might not be available if I called back). After waiting for nearly 40-45 minutes or so for her to finally reach a supervisor, she came back and said that her supervisor had authorized her to make a "one-time exception" for me and only charge me $75. I said "thanks" but actually this shouldn't be any exception at all, to which she responded quite adamantly again that this change should still be $150 because my original ticket was issued pre-June 15, and again that it didn't matter what I was reading, her rules were the rules.

Needless to say, this is pretty disconcerting knowing how many folks out there will be told this mis-information and will pay the $150 not knowing that they are being over-charged. If there is any positive, I was not charged any close-in fee, although I would have disputed that too since I don't think the close-in fee should apply to an award I reserved months ago (and had to pay $25 for the "phone" fee to ticket this originally).