My wife and daughter recently flew BOS-MUC-FCO and used United miles to book economy for both the BOS-MUC long-haul flight and the MUC-FCO short haul. Leisure, not work travel.

An upgrade offer for $150 came in on check-in and looked confusing. They clicked on this and, well, they ended up feeling a bit bamboozled pretty much the moment they clicked through and paid for it online because the offer was ultimately just for the short-haul flight. Of course, being upgraded for a small amount of money at the last minute may seem like a deal too good to be true, such things have existed so they did it and felt like it was worded and displayed strangely. In a way to allow people to easily make this mistake. You know how you hear stories of people getting easily scammed when on calls with companies they think are the real thing but they turn out not to be? This felt like that... even though they were merely trying to check into the flights they had booked.

Anyway, I have since seen screenshots of offers here and online but I have never had an upgrade offer like it myself and they do not have a screenshot of theirs but they were charged $300 and it happened.

Has anyone else seen the offers for a long+short haul flight and thought it was a bit deceptive, or is that just us? Anything we can do? I mean, they did take the flight and ended up in short-haul biz, but did not need it (had just carry-ons anyway) and felt as though the airline found a way to scoff a good few hundred bucks off unsuspecting passengers who were doing check-in online (a process that I always thought should be less involved and given more than just 24 hours to get done especially when people have busy jobs or are in different time zones, etc).

I think it could be a good thing to offer these and allow passengers to do them but it can be confusing. They recall the small screen not really displaying which flight it was going to be for, and almost looking as though it were for either the whole thing or at least not just the short flight. There were no meters in graphics like some screenshots I have seen. Instead, one radial button that said something like, "You can upgrade this itinerary" And so they missed whatever it was that could have made it more clear.

They then called LH and were told that since this was booked with United miles, to call them. Two 30-minute calls (one resulting in a mistaken hang-up by the agent trying to transfer them to the right department, which seems to be a thing that happens a lot as of late imo) and they finally got through to MileagePlus, who told them that this upgrade would not have been allowed to be done on a miles ticket so whatever they just did online would not even go through and when they arrived at MUC and wanted to fly to FCO, the airline would put them into their originally booked economy seats. The MP agent also said the pending card charge would drop off and not go through. This was incorrect. LH put them into the new business seats. And the credit card on file for the upgrade did in fact go through for the charge.

Last-minute big decisions, checking in with a lot of busy life going on (when you are about to travel a lot does happen all at once so it can be hard to focus and so being in that position can stink), and deals and offers that are not quite clear, and then agents who do not know the real rules... all can be a bad thing that costs money.

I have seen that LH won't refund these things. They had originally called LH and then UA to try to see if they could at least pay more to upgrade the long-haul instead, if able. But the agent told them not to worry because nothing would change and she was wrong so we paid.
It was all wrong and spooks us away from wanting to click these things again in the future.

Thoughts welcome