Originally Posted by
fumje
Often the literal only way to know before purchase that it's non-changeable is to check the fare rules, which 99% of consumers don't do and wouldn't know how to read if they did. It's beyond annoying that United haven't added a clear warning before purchase, let alone that they started using them in the first place.
I know this has been referenced before, but even the fare rules are ambiguous. There's a lengthy "Changes" section which appears to track a normal deep discount economy fare. The only indicator of how special these fares are is the one line "NONREF/0VALU/NOCHG" in the Penalties section (and this isn't really a penalty). I'm moderately competent at reading fare rules, and it took me a while to reach the proper conclusion on this one (after doing a dummy booking once the dreaded message had popped up in my reservation on the app).