I was booked on an SFO-EWR redeye, which UA cancelled about 10 hours before the flight was scheduled to go. They’d auto-rebooked me onto something that didn’t work (surprise!) When I found out, I logged into the UA app to look at possible alternatives. I found flights that could be purchased then-and there for same class of service revenue bookings, but when I called the 1K desk I was told that they could not see any availability for those flights - this makes no sense to me at all. Shouldn’t an actual UA agent (certainly one at the 1K desk) have full visibility into their inventory? Both the app and expertflyer were showing cabin availability in multiple fare classes (I don’t remember exactly, but it wasn’t “just one single seat in Y”). The agent offered to transfer me to the “web help desk” which was about the last thing I needed.
Anyway.. is this a thing? Should I have just HUACA’d? At that point I was so dumbfounded (and VERY under the gun time-wise). by the fact that I could see bookable seats on expertflyer, matrix/Google, AND their own app that I probably didn’t handle it right, but …. How is this possible? ;-)