Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
I did read the other thread (and this one), and I find it plausible that UA has indeed ratcheted back on biz travelers, but I think we may conflating to things: OPM & Discounts. I'm not sure UA cares whether it is OPM or personal funds, and while they probably (and correctly) surmise that they need not offer as much extra inducement to a sale when using OPM, this is a harder argument. Both because GS not something that works in the moment, but instead directs an entire year of spend, and also because a lot of the time they simply won't know the source of the funds.
I just hope that my non-J spend will qualify me for 2025...
Great point on conflating these two things.
I might change the bolded line above (my bolding) to:
"...also because they might not always know the source of the funds."
If the travel is booked using a corporate travel site, like Concur, they certainly know the source of the funds.
And my guess is some (large) percentage of the people in question with GS have some large (ish) portion of their spend through one of these sites.
My spend comes from three sources:
- Work - booked through Concur, OPM, probably discounted fares
- My personal CC - booked direct with UA, not discounted
- My side business CC - booked direct through UA, OPM, (they don't know where that money is coming from), not discounted.
2 and 3 look the same to them.
I think, but have no idea, that more often than not they do know the source of the funds. But I could be totally wrong. There are a lot businesses out there that people book direct and get reimbursed. It is OPM but looks like personal spend.