Originally Posted by
expatinglasgow
Called back and got the same response. The upgrade shows as cleared so I'm being told she was upgraded.
Your (or your mom's) next recourse is the Department of Transportation consumer complaint form,
http://www.dot.gov/airconsumer/file-consumer-complaint . This triggers an internal review process which will get a more thorough investigation and a fair response from UA.
You (or she) should include salient details like:
(*) Booked in coach in seat 17B. Her record locator is [xxx] and her e-ticket number is [yyy].
(*) Applied a confirmable upgrade instrument gifted from her child
(*) Upgrade apparently did not clear, she boarded in coach (17B boarding pass was scanned and she boarded the plane)
(*) Online, the united.com Web site shows that her upgrade was confirmed and she was assigned seat 1A, but this never happened.
(*) She was traveling with her spouse, in seat 17A with record locator [aaa] and e-ticket number [bbb], who can confirm that she was never notified of an upgrade for her seat.
(*) United, when contacted, says that they they cannot return the upgrade instrument because the traveler flew in business class.
If United in fact processed an upgrade her but left her in coach, she would like United to treat this as a downgrade situation and apply their internal policy documented under "GG OVS DOWNGRADE", providing a $1500 e-certificate plus refund of the upgrade instrument.
She should additionally ask United to review whether *someone else* flew in seat 1A. Did the seat go out non-empty, occupied perhaps by a friend of a gate agent or an employee? These sort of "shenanigans" are extremely rare but not unheard of and it should be concerning that the agents you've talked to aren't aware of the possibility or interested in investigating (
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/conti...ty-ensues.html ).
You've made a reasonable effort to get UA to look into this (you called at least twice) and you've gotten nowhere. File the DOT complaint and your mom will get a follow-up call from UA corporate offices within a couple of weeks with a thorough investigation and correct explanation of what happened.
Originally Posted by
Often1
Not so. If OP's mom boarded before the UG cleared, it was absolutely the GA's discretion as to whether to go onboard, locate her and have her swim upstream. All depends on the GA, what other tasks there are and how the boarding process is going.
If the choice is delaying the push vs. finding a pax who has forfeited the UG by boarding, that's an easy one for the GA (and the other pax).
I realize that this is awkward when the recipient is not a regular flier as a GPU-user would ordinarily be, but the only way to assure that this works is to ask the GA for direction. Some will guarantee that they will come find you. Others will tell you to wait at the gate and others may tell you that you may board and that they will do their best to come find you, but without any guarantees.
Ya, personally if I have a GPU pending and I board (which is rare…), I fully expect it will not clear and even if it does somehow clear I don't expect to get it.
The suggestions I outline above are (I think) the best possible strategy for the OP to get the best possible outcome for themselves. Whether UA made the correct choice here for operational efficiency or whatever other reason is up for them to determine and they may well decide that for some exogenous reason they made the "right" call that best maximized passenger happiness.