Originally Posted by
AnalogMan
Encountered an unexpected problem earlier this month. I bought B-fare economy class to be able to upgrade and was able to upgrade outbound (SFO-TPE). However, on the return flight (TPE-SFO), despite having award inventory, the Star Alliance upgrade didn't work. I received the upgrade confirmation email from United but it had no passenger name nor certificate number. Wondering if anyone has encountered this before. If this is a feature as opposed to a bug, then I would have to choose which flight to upgrade.
The price difference for B-fare versus lower fare class was small enough this time, I was OK with it even if no upgrades cleared, so having one leg clear was nice. 100% RDM and EQM versus 50% was worth the ~$150 (2.5 cpm) fare difference to me.
There is a technical defect now between the United SAUA system and virtually every *A airline - in short, no more upgrades for the foreseeable future until this is fixed. I escalated it, but was told there is no current ETA to fix, and I doubt it's on their priority list given UA's current president Kirby hates passengers and loves anything that inconveniences people or makes them miserable. From what I was told, it could be days, weeks or months before this is fixed.