Originally Posted by
sexykitten7
As others have noted, the newer passes (I've got some with expiry Oct2015 and Jun2016) have 2 additional lines which were not included in older ones like the photo upthread:
-Valid only in United Clubs.
-This pass may not be sold, bartered, traded, exchanged or purchased.
And even if you had an old pass, I bet the new T&C on Chase.com would legally govern the use of the pass.
So transferred passes are fine but those purchased (like OP's) are not. Ms. Dragon's interrogation is really quite analogous to audits on award tickets.
There's a huge difference between an award ticket that's worth more and a lounge visit that's worth
maybe $50.
At any rate, I fail to see why this is a huge deal. UA may not like it, but it's certainly not illegal (or *cough* fraudulent) as they try to make it out to be.
Originally Posted by
Mama
I applaud the lounge attendant's effort to reduce the number of people entering United Club. ^^^^^^^^
Newsflash: those Chase passes are issued without regards to how many people have memberships or not. If UA truly cared about overcrowding (hint it doesn't), they wouldn't be giving them away to everyone with a CC.
So if it wasn't the OP using the pass, it would have been someone else.
Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Breakage? UA assumes that some percentage of these passes won't be used. If they can be sold, a higher fraction will actually be used.
UA is free to adjust the perk to compensate for that fact, if it is indeed statistically significant. @:-)
Again, how is that the customer's problem?
Originally Posted by
pruss2ny
i don't have an answer for this but i had already given it some thought.
one thing that came to mind was that, as is, its a pretty inefficient market.
as other posters have noted, they have received passes, but never gotten around to using them. further, the people that get passes along w/ credit card are statistically probably pretty spread out around the country.
if you start allowing a secondary market for the passes, i could envision 2 undesirable outcomes:
1. the inefficient distribution of passes across the country suddenly becomes more efficient as there is an economic incentive for people who may not have used their passes to cash in...suddenly passes that would have maybe been used at a sleepy club like PDX if at all find themselves sold to people likely clustered around busier airports....busier airports, crowded clubs, and now increased supply of access to those already crowded clubs
2. potential for fraud...which a number people are suggesting here and what the OP even said the lounge agent explained that they were on the look out for
1 only makes sense if there were UCs all over the country and at nearly every airport. They're not. They're at hubs and airports with significant O/D traffic to warrant having a club. UA's closed a significant amount of clubs over the years, so even some large cities don't have clubs now.
If these cards are scattered all over the country as you claim, it would make sense that most of these will not be used at an origin airport, but a hub. Hubs usually have multiple, large clubs and in theory, should be able to better handle it.
If UA has a capacity problem with its clubs, then it needs to build more clubs or reopen some to meet demand. Again, this is not the pax's problem but UA's to deal with.
You can't give stuff out like candy, pray people won't use it and then complain and try to limit it when they do. Either manage the perk differently or increase capacity to meet demand.