Originally Posted by
WineCountryUA
The difference in the Choice Points program is the ticket was purchased direct on united.com at published fares. With the UR program, the ticket was purchased via Chase TA and may not be a published fare.
From what I could tell, when you go through UR to book tickets, you could use one of two options
A) Cash + Points
B) Cash
However, the Cash + Points option is completely flexible in tuning the ratio of cash or points, with the value of points set to 0.012 cents per point, and the total value of the ticket set to equal the cash price of the ticket. So at least at the point of ordering, there's a distinct cost of the fare that's being published. Moreover, in my experience in purchasing tickets through UR, that cost in terms of dollars has always been the same as fare that shows up on UA or through ITA.
So I honestly haven't seen anything that can really qualify as unpublished fares through UR for this layman. I do see that the tickets that I purchased through UR with cash has credited with PQD's, so I don't know how the "same cost" tickets in terms of points-only or points + cash wouldn't or shouldn't credit with the same PQD. Granted, the TA that UR uses may separate out tickets that were paid with points-only or points + cash from cash-only and use "bulk" tickets, but that seems to be something that Chase can and should do something about.