Originally Posted by
hellyea
I was already IDB'd -- I denied the VDB offer when they announced it because the GA was a moron. She only looked at non stop availability rather than connections, so I refused a 5PM nonstop. I even pulled out the timetable to be like hey check these connections. Supervisor got us on the 951AM through Denver (and she didn't have to open more inventory up for it). So had they offered that connection during the ask for volunteers, I would have probably taken the VDB at that point. Again, agent was not the best trained one.
Ugh...connectors are sometimes easier to accommodate because they don't need to get to ORD or whatever city the flight is going on to. They sometimes have more opportunities.
Idiot GA indeed.
I had a similar such RCC agent nearly refuse to add me to a VDB list because I had a connection. Fortunately the GA was more with it. The connection didn't phase him one bit -- he found protection through another hub a couple hours later. Those flying the nonstop only would have required an overnight and flight the next day.
Originally Posted by
N1120A
That would imply that you will spend less than $400 on United (including PMCO) in the next 12 months. Remember, VDB residual value = $0, but VDB is accepted in the same manner as cash payment. It applies to taxes, fees and anything else that is part of your original purchase price of the ticket.
Remember that there is a cost to using the vouchers -- they're paper, you have to call, hold a ticket, go to the airport (or send them in), they can be lost/stolen, they have to be used on UA/CO, etc.
Plus there's no residual, but usable in blocks, so a $350 ticket you'd either lose $50 or pay $50 out of pocket and have another $100 to repeat the process with again.
Further, if all or most of your travel is business travel, these won't help unless you really want to offset your business travel.
at the rate the OP was given, $360 cash or $400 vouchers, that's only a 10% hit, I think the cash is the clear winner unless you have imminent UA leisure travel you want to book. A different ratio (e.g., $160 cash vs. $400 voucher), it'd be a different story.
I think the situation was well played, and the only thing I might have done differently is try to push for an OAL reroute just to drive up the cost of the incident as a punitive measure to UA. But from the sounds of things, stuff was pretty full, so that might not have been an option.