Originally Posted by
dgcpaphd
...After confirming that the Silverwings program was essentially “broken” the United employee wrote many international Silverwings fares for me since March of 2008. Due to the merger, the employee was reassigned and is no longer available to issue Silverwings fares...
Thank you for starting this thread,
dgcpaphd. Mrs. Fredd and I are both lifetime members as well, and I started the
Silver Wings Program Cancelled thread that
gfowler-ord-1k referenced. (FWIW UA spells it as
two words and adds the word "Plus" but either way it's broken and should read
Minus Silver Wings.
)
Kudos for persevering to the point that you achieved an employee dedicated to writing fares pre-merger. ^ We never got that far, and the
domestic zone fares are, as you write, impossible to book on the UA website. Besides that, they became quite expensive, including some small towns in Wyoming and Colorado (a popular destination for us) that were arbitrarily moved into a higher fare class. For another example, paying
$1182 for SEA-HNL is hardly a good deal.
It would have been much cleaner had UA simply refunded our lifetime memberships, as they did with the annual memberships. UA
chose not to do that.
Like you, we are 1Ks and MM flyers. UA has done well by us over the past decade and we rationalized this shabby situation by recalling all of the good deals we've found. Still, it rankles.
Can anyone offer a solution or recommendation for how we might get United to honor its side of the contract that was created when we purchased lifetime Silverwings contracts?
What if we who are lifetime members compose a joint letter that we're all comfortable in signing and mail it individually and simultaneously to one address at UA's headquarters, e.g. Jeff Smisek?
What we do after that would depend on the response we receive.
Converting the text of your opening post into point form and requesting that UA honor what it proclaims to be true on its own site would be a good starting point IMO, i.e.
As a Silver Wings Plus member, you have access to our exclusive Zone Fares, which allow you and a traveling companion of any age to travel roundtrip, internationally or within the U.S., at fixed low fares...
If you joined Silver Wings before September 2005, you still have access to special Zone Fares. You may book Zone Fares with no booking fee online at united.com.
FWIW.
Fredd