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Old Dec 29, 2011 | 5:00 pm
  #27  
Sulley
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Our Nation's Capital
Programs: UA 1K, Marriott BonVoy LT Titanium Elite, National Executive Elite
Posts: 832
Originally Posted by channa
It's more of a perception issue. As you can see with this thread, the OP assumed there was a TOD anomaly because of what was displayed on the upgrade list.

Maybe if CO's systems worked as reliably and cleanly as they should and there weren't this cloud of mystery behind their processes, there would be fewer reported anomalies and it wouldn't matter as much.

Remember that UA uses real-time waitlisting which really removes a lot of the anomalies and confusion around upgrades. UA also has more transparency into their upgrade system by displaying upgrade status (Pending, Waitlisted, Confirmed), all of which is visible on both the website and the agent system, so if there is any sort of problem, it can be easily dealt with by people who have tools to identify the problem, understand how the system works, and can fix it.

CO's is more of a black box -- the sweep runs when it runs, there's no visibility into whether you're eligible for the sweep, there's no agent access into when or whether the sweep ran or whether you were even considered (best they can do is guess at it, or BS you to get you off the phone), and so forth.

Until CO gets to the point where they can provide the same level of visibility and reliability into the upgrade system and process that UA has, there are always going to be these allegations of impropriety that will need a company representative to decipher. That's why I think it's best to have it as clean as possible for customers.

That said, I'm not saying that Jeff's co-workers shouldn't be able to see what they need. I think that so long as there's this dark cloud of confusion around what CO's systems are doing with upgrades, maybe the co-worker info should be available to you under a different portal.
There is a lack of transparency in both systems. Let's just say I got on a certain sUA flight the other night that was "oversold" by 26 for no reason. There were no misconnects or anything else that would indicate why this would be the case. In fact, there was no real data of what the actual PBT's were whatsoever. It was quite confusing for me and a lot of other standby passengers. Even the GA had to decipher what was actually going on.

I ended up getting on and having the middle seat next to me remain open. This happens quite a bit on sUA flights. Both systems are "special" at times
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