Originally Posted by
lincolnjkc
Two things: 1 - Not just theoretically. I've told UA that I will not accept a downgrade on a paid fare and they've happily found me space on American (and offered Delta which I politely declined as part of my "Delta will never see another of my dollars" campaign), though I did ask if they could look at American (nicely) after getting the "oh, only Economy available..." line ... Two times due to maintenance, once due to "late inbound aircraft" (never did figure out the ultimate cause of the delay).. In one other downgrade I got a refund of fare difference buy not compensation for taking a Y seat.
[And amazingly -- and I give props to UA both UA and the agent for this -- when we had a CLE-JAX divert to ATL due to maintenance last week, a 1K Desk agent secured space on AA ATL-CLT-JAX when the easy/obvious/sensible thing would have been to just push me to Delta (as it turned out they found a spare UAEX (Republic) aircraft in ATL and just moved all but 6 of us over to that and continued the flight.
Good to know there are some success stories. I was not aware they can rebook you on other airlines! I don't know why I did not think of this (I guess just the shell shock of what has just happened
))
Originally Posted by
bocastephen
It is simply not reasonable to expect an upgraded customer to be downgraded for your convenience. I now only fly P/Z fares for the most part and I would never expect or ask UA to downgrade or remove someone from F so I could deal with a re-route - I will work with them to find another option everyone agrees with, or take the segment in Y and ask for the fare difference back. Once someone is upgraded, they should not be downgraded for the convenience of another customer.
I agree with you that this is not a good solution. I would be mad as hell too if I was that person. My point is simply that United has treated us (paying first class customers) like garbage in this case - absolutely no attempt was made to accommodate us in this situation which was not our fault. This is why after this I am not paying any $ for United business.