Originally Posted by
RuesterGAGT
Hello all. I'm writing this for a friend who occasionally uses United for business (I'm a DL person so I don't know UA's policies). Any help/advice/recommendations you guys and gals could leave for her on here would be great.
Here is her message:
"I need to rant and I hope you all listen. I purchased a $600 plane ticket on United. One week before the flight, I paid an additional $550 to change my ticket (don't even get me started on change fees) to leave earlier as I had a meeting I was required to attend. The day of the flight, United cancelled the earlier flight, put me back onto the original flight and refuses to refund the $550 because "they still got me to my destination." How is this okay? How can the airlines dictate such terrible pricing and customer service strategies? And I as the customer am just supposed to accept this? Grrrr....I'm beyond irritated. Any advice from my traveling friends on how I can get a resolution?"
For future reference, another option to paying the additional $550 to change the ticket, is to plan a SDC ($50 for General Member) to the earlier flight. Unlike Delta's SDC policy, even with the recent enhancements, United's SDC policy is much more generous. Your friend may have moved up to an earlier flight beginning 24 hours from the original departure date/time. Thus, if the original flight was leaving at 5 pm on 6/17, she could try to confirm an earlier flight starting at 5 pm on 6/16 (i.e. any flight leaving 5:01 pm on the 16th).
I realize that this is a more risky proposition, and the "security" and peace of mind of having an earlier flight 1 week in advance may well be the worth the additional $550. However, for non critical business trips and/or leisure travel, this option may be more appealing than spending hundreds of dollars. I get the impression, that many (if not most) travelers do not take advantage of this feature.