Originally Posted by
RichardNixon
I priced out fares in F and then bought the W ticket through Concur but I was caught off-guard to see the F ticket jump $100 in price. I went back and cancelled the W ticket and a few minutes later the F dropped back down to its previous rate. I've now gone in and bought farelock for the F fare since I had a few bucks left on a CC's airline fee reimbursement that expires this month, but now I'm wary that it won't help me since the Concur reservation will be a totally separate ticket.
So my question to FT is...are there any magic words I should use when talking with United to try and get the farelock-ed price when I want to buy up to F? Failing that, any other advice on how to go about this irritating chore? I've send an email to our corp TA but apparently their SLA for emails is 72 hours, so I'm trying to solve this on my own.
I'm guessing that what's happening here is that the flight only has one seat in W available. The price for F on domestic routes is normally tied to the Y inventory, to ensure a minimum price delta between Y and F. If you were to try it again, I bet you'd find that the cheapest coach fare had also gone up by $100.
I'm not sure of any magic words to make this work. However, if you're willing to forego PQD and extra redeemable miles on the fare difference, you may be able to get the same price differential via the "Upgrade Reservation" link on united.com.
FYI: UA will report the re-issuance back to Concur, so you might want to make sure your company is OK with you paying out of pocket to upgrade. (There are legitimate reasons they might not be, especially if you're going from corporate fares to public fares by doing so).