Originally Posted by
legionnaire
I can confirm something has changed in C1 Travel portal. I Have another US domestic flight ticketed through the C1 portal. Attempting to cancel it via United.com throws a message this was booked through TA and to work with TA. The C1 portal ominously warns that canceling the fare will result in 0 refund or Airline credit.
That breaks the value of C1 portal for me. I value the flexibility of being able to cancel and get the flight credit back more.
FWIW,
# both fares that suffered this fate were Q Fares on United.
# fares on Delta seem to still work - booked through C1; canceled through Delta.com
that’s a bummer if this is the new SOP with UA.
But….
Hopper (C1 Portal) is really just an agency, and I suspect this is like any other agency. Unfortunately, UA does not allow residual credit for tickets any longer - they make an exception for tickets booked on their own platform, but TAs need to follow the rule. If there was a restriction put on the tickets C1 issues now and changes need to be done through C1, you should be able to change to a ticket of equal or greater value (and pay the residual) or a ticket of less value and forfeit the residual. This is like any TA. UA should also be willing to take over the ticket if you call - there is typically a fee ($50?) and then you should be able to change via UA going forward.
I suspect the ability to change via UA.com was always an unintended thing and whatever hole was there has now been plugged. Or a couple of folks have been unlucky recently and these are a couple of ‘exceptions’ somehow that have thrown the change error. Time will tell I gusss.
I also don’t discount the possibility that, based on the reports I’ve seen in this thread, there have been a lot of folks trying to change C1 tickets and they finally decided to plug the hole to fix that. I personally can not believe the amount of people on here who are intentionally buying tickets using the C1 credit to simply get an FFC back. Personally, I don’t see the value in a card where I have to resort to things like this. I will admit this summer, I did have to cancel and get a credit for a ticket booked through C1 (that used the credit), but it was wholly unintended and fairly last minute cancel that we didn’t want to have to do, but daughter got sick the day before we were supposed to travel so just made the most sense. Have had the card for 3 years and haven’t had to change anything I’ve used the credit for in the past.