Originally Posted by
TechMarauder
UA is cheap when it comes to VDB. They once offered me $100 for a 6 hour later flight. I laughed. (Although I've also gotten $500 for a flight 2 hours later)
Delta regularly offers $400-600 for any VDB and has gone to $800-1000+ in some cases
In addition to sometimes being cheap, United seems to be unpredictable with what they will offer. In the past (just before the merger), I seem to recall United switched to offering a minimum $400 in most cases and then raising it if necessary. Now they often lowball the initial offer so much that pax get discouraged from even entering into a negotiation with the GA to find an acceptable price. Now I think (hope?) UA will be offering somewhat better VDB amounts, but also hope they will give GAs back some of the leeway they had pre-merger to tailor offers to individual situations. With pre-merger UA, I often had GAs offer F or C seats in addition to a voucher to sweeten the compensation, whereas in the past 3-4 years I have had GAs tell me UA no longer lets them do that (though I think there are some situations still where it happens). Smisek greatly impeded the ability of GAs to handle VDBs and irrops in many, many ways that this is an extreme example of what many pax including myself already experience on a frequent basis when flights are oversold, canceled, delayed, etc.