Originally Posted by
rankourabu
Wow lots of bitter people here who didn't get a ticket and now pulling the ethics card!
But more importantly, why do I keep reading about UA F?
I purposely avoided UA flights! Am I the only one?
No your not. That's exactly why I didn't get in on this. I thought partner flights were not part of it and I won't fly UA internationally ANYWHERE FOR ANY PRICE. Honestly. I also didn't expect them to be honored and still don't so I didn't really look for partner space.
I have no problem w the people that got this deal. My problem is with the ones screaming DOT this and LAWSUIT that. They should have known from the beginning this would happen. They talk a good game of teaching UA a lesson but that's garbage. We may all be hurt by these few selfish OVER ENTITLED people. What happens when UA now refuses to ticket awards without 48 hour notice or has each one reviewed etc etc. With all of UA's problems. Milesge Plus is still pretty good. But it would be UA's right to take a lot away from the program leaving it not any better then Deltas. (That is what the legacy of this mistake may leave us with)
Originally Posted by
MarkXS
What most posters are missing is that there's a subtext to the DOT regulations, and we should be seeing it: The reason that the regulations explicitly say "mistake fares" are covered and cannot be raised after ticketing is to provide a deterrent from sloppy practices, deliberately or not, by inflicting a penalty on the airline that tries to get away with weaseling out of honoring its mistakes.
Mistakes aren't supposed to happen. That's why they're called mistakes. "Miss-takes."
In the past, airlines had impunity when the made a mistake. Now the DOT regulations say, "tough luck Charlie, eat it and let the customer fly."
If eating it causes millions of dollars in losses to the airline, than that's a darn good "teachable moment" to encourage that and other airlines to fix their business processes, controls, and systems to not do it again.
All us current or ex-UA/CO flyers are pretty disgusted with all the systems and business processes and bad decisions around IT and training resulting from the botched merger, right? Well isn't making United eat it and honor these EXACTLY the kind of lesson SMI/J needs to get about how much he screwed up? Me buying flights on Taca, LAN, and Alaska instead of UA doesn't exactly send a message the way a DOT order to honor the tickets or pay the fine does.
I didn't get in on this one, and I had no excuse, because I wasn't in jail without WiFi (to paraphrase MommyPoints BoardingArea blog.) So I don't have a dog in this race. I've never gotten this good a deal; just the Y-cabin $314 LAS to MUC and $214 LAX-LHR LH/UA combo meals a few years back, and getting screwed out of a better one on Air Canada a couple of years ago, months after booking. But this is now, and the DOT rules are now different and stronger, and explicit that mistakes must be ordered.
Those same rules also require one cash price quote, without the nonsense about what's base fare, YQ, taxes, 9/11 fee etc - it's got to be quoted as "what does the customer's form of payment get charged to be able to fly on the plane?" Put that concept together with the "mistakes must be honored" and these tickets did cost money, did have value other than the miles. A monkey could see that UA has very little wiggle room here, and that their UA Insider response was old-rules-thinking.
UA screwed up, and under the law nowadays in the USA, they have to honor their screwup. Which is a great incentive to stop screwing up.
Well written and makes a lot if sense except you give not one sentence or word about "consequences" of taking advantage of this screw up". As I just said in my post above we will have those people that took UA to the mat on this to blame when UA tightens up its rules w Mileage Plus. When they make us wait 48 hours for ticketing in the future, NO MORE close in bookings, NO MORE fun side trips by people that know how to work the system, NO MORE changes after travel begins, etc, etc, etc. MP is a pretty good program right now. I doubt management will lose a wink of sleep if they bring the program down a peg or two. Who could blame them. They would not be in this mess if they didn't allow same day ticketing. Perhaps we all will lose that great part of the program as a consequence of taking UA to court or filing a protest with the DOT