Originally Posted by
Kannai
They said the system let them change it without the GPU. They said I just got lucky. Should I be worried? or just grateful?
If there's an aircraft swap, or IRROPS, the system may kick you back into Y -- but there's a real chance that would have messed up your seat assignment anyway. The agent may get in trouble if your flight gets audited, but I don't see what else you could have done. It's rude to argue with someone who's doing you a favor, beyond maybe an "are you sure?"
Originally Posted by
Kannai
Once I've had a phone agent change an S fare to a W and apply a GPU without charging for the change (they said it looked like that leg should be W anyway since the domestic connecting leg to the hub was a W) but how is this situation possible?
If you were in W, connecting to S, you must have had a fare break at the connecting point. That's rare, because most UA discount international fares can't be combined, end-on-end, with domestic fares. However, what you're seeing, in both cases, is that SHARES allows agents to do practically anything they want. There's very little inherent validation besides an inventory check -- and that only applies to UA inventory.
Originally Posted by
Kannai
I asked the agent several times and said I was concerned I was going to find myself being asked for an instrument or a lot of money* later. They said I wouldn't be.
The only way you're going to get asked for additional money is if your ticket gets audited. As long as your ticket was revalidated -- there's no "please contact United Reservations" message on your itinerary -- no airport agent is likely to look into it. It's possible that you might get the instrument debited, so I wouldn't use that extra GPU until after the trip.
You can get an idea of how much the fare difference should be by pricing out a new reservation on the website and selecting a W fare.