Originally Posted by
IAH-OIL-TRASH
I’m pretty sure you’re confused as to what you bought. A “couple of hundreds” dollars is definitely NOT a typical Polaris buy-up or upfare from economy. It sounds like you bought into F for the EWR-MSP leg only. If you look at your reservation, does it say “Waitlist” on the LIS-EWR leg? If not, you didn’t pay for what you think you paid for. UA offers (online/app) the “upgrade cabin” option and prices on a leg by leg basis and you need to select both legs to get the price (and upgrade availability - confirmed or waitlist) for both legs - sounds like you didn’t.
I’ve definitely seen (for example) “Upgrade this itinerary for as low as $79”. That price is definitely not for the whole itinerary - it’s the price for one leg of it. For me, it’s the SFO-LAS portion of a HNL-SFO-LAS itinerary. The HNL-SFO part would be $600 more or whatever.
I’m still confused when I read your post - did you use miles in addition to the upgrade fee? If so, the “couple of hundreds” is the associated fee with a mileage upgrade redemption request.
We are definitely wait listed on the LIS-EWR leg. The confirmation email I received states the upgrade request is for LIS-MSP, the entire itinerary. My fault for not saving the original offer to be able to say what the actual terminology was. And I did not use miles for the upgrade, only cash, but when I spoke with one of the United reps they implied that somehow my purchase was for some type of miles or miles credit. Sorry I'm not better versed in the United terminology, but I'm on a steep learning curve here.
Here's a copy of the email confirming the upgrade on the one leg (which seems to imply the request was for the entire itinerary) :
