Hi all,

I had booked a ticket for a friend yesterday into today LIM-EWR-SFO. At the time of booking, I was able to get window seats on both flights. Then, during check-in, again the windows seats were available closer to the front of the aircraft and were confirmed. Then, at one point a message popped up for me on United.com offering the possibility of volunteering to take a later set of flights LIM-IAH-SFO. I consulted my friend and she said it'd be fine so I made a bid. $400, $500, $600, depending on the delay. She still kept her original boarding passes and went to the airport. She waited for confirmation, but in the end they did not put her on LIM-IAH-SFO. However, as she was about to board, apparently they issued her brand new boarding passes... 28F and 30C.

I find this a bit strange that they didn't mention this on the page where they ask about volunteering and I feel like offering United an opportunity to give away your seats to someone else shouldn't result in you needing to give up your seat if they don't end up doing so. Why should the passenger traveling be worse off for offering to help United out?

In the end, it's ended up a worse experience for my friend, who was on her first flight ever and wanted to see the view from an airplane and I feel bad for having recommended her to volunteer and a bit mad at United for creating such a situation. Does anyone know if this is standard practice? I mean, why don't mention this as a possibility of volunteering?