Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
Sorry about that. You are indeed right: Even if I may be correct on the probability part, it’s caveat emptor, and the right decision comes down to individual situations. I was probably thinking of the inverse: The fact that r/t tickets get you discounts in some domestic markets is in no way a generalizable rule.
100% agreed there.
Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
Again, not more false than the implied assertion that the inverse is true. I have a number of international credits restricted to city-pairs. Unless we want to get deep into what “generally” means, I was trying to assert that ignoring it could end in costly misery. Unless one of the UA folks on here would confirm either way, we’re probably stuck here. (I’m guessing fare codes also play a role.)
The fare rules do play a role, but generally a higher fare class will lead to less restrictive, not more restrictive rules. Specifically, you’ll find them in the combinations section of the fare rules. In order to be restricted to specific city pairs, the fare would have to specify A-B-A only, or disallow open jaws, double open jaws, and circle trips. That does occasionally happen, but it’s rare. It’s much more common to find fares that allow open jaws but disallow double open jaws, I’ve flown many such trips, where I can fly, e.g., Austin to Osaka, then return Tokyo to Austin, and the fare is reasonable; but try to return Tokyo to Houston and the fare jumps up by thousands of dollars. (However, in this same example,
Osaka to Houston would be fine; either one is a single open jaw — either an open jaw between Osaka and Tokyo or an open jaw between Houston and Austin).
For example, some rules for business class tickets Washington to Tokyo. Here’s the fare rule for a refundable D fare available for a Monday to Friday trip next week:
DOUBLE OPEN JAWS/CIRCLE TRIPS NOT PERMITTED. END-ON-END END-ON-END COMBINATIONS PERMITTED. VALIDATE ALL FARE COMBINATIONS. PROVIDED - COMBINATIONS ARE WITH ANY 4TH LEVEL ECONOMY UNRESTRICTED-TYPE FARES FOR CARRIER UA. OPEN JAWS FARES MAY BE COMBINED ON A HALF ROUND TRIP BASIS -TO FORM SINGLE OPEN JAWS
So, if you happened to be flying on that particular fare, you’d have been able to cancel and use a credit for a valid open jaw.
However, something I learned last year is that not all open jaws are created equally. If you combine this with a ticket departing Japan, and returning to Washington, you’ll be able to keep this fare; but if you wanted to depart, e.g., Shanghai, it may not work. With the exception that both US/Canada and Western Europe appear to be considered one country for these purposes, you
may run into higher fares if your open jaw crosses a country border.
That said, I wonder if we’re splitting hairs here. They’re not linked to the exact same city pairs, but the city pairs are obviously highly relevant in figuring out what you can do with the credit. It is by no means unrestricted.
The point I was making originally is that for non-refundable domestic fares that are
not one-way fares — common for me, less common for you — the restrictions work identically. If I have an AUS-DTW round-trip that uses a round-trip fare, and I want to change the return, I can change it to CLE-AUS or EWR-AUS or TVC-AUS or whatnot, but I can’t change it to AUS-CLE or SEA-AUS or anything else that doesn’t make a valid round-trip.
Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
I may have had some awfully bad luck, and probably I have. But I find that a poor defense of how the system should work. It is a bad customer experience. (To have a bad luck, that is. We’d all rather be lucky than dead.) . For me, I have been able to expense most of these things, but what if you cannot do that? It might be an argument between contracted rules, and what feels reasonable to customers. I’m in the customer experience camp.
Sure, that makes sense, but the problem is that United’s business model is built around price discrimination, and allowing too many reasonable exceptions for customers destroys that. I’m not suggesting you were doing anything wrong — but if you could always defeat minimum stay requirements by calling and asking nicely, there’d be 19,000 blog entries about “one weird trick” that would destroy UA’s pricing model. So it’s a bit of a fine line between a better customer experience and not shooting yourself in the foot.
Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
I obviously get that. It’s not like either one of us only travel on school camping trips. While my argument was not about arcane fare rules, my trip wasn’t even 7 days to begin with. Being asked for a $10K additional charge (not change fee) on a $14K trip in J when ample inventory is available, is simply beyond the pale from a customer experience viewpoint. If you do not agree, I suspect I can’t get you there. Just like nobody can make me think my experiences was a good one just because the fare rules allowed the airline to do something. (And I’m in the far-far super lucky camp where very little of this has come out of my own wallet. Still doesn’t make it a good non-paying customer experience.)
If there is ample inventory and you weren’t violating a minimum stay rule, I wonder if the agent just fat-fingered the change originally and tried to put you into J without actually needing to do so. The other option would be that there
wasn’t actually ample inventory, even if there were a lot of empty seats on the seat map. UA generally won’t go J9 C0 on a flight that’s only a day away, but it could easily have been J4 C0 but had a lot of people not select seats. I would be upset by the $10K request myself.
Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
Agreed! I never thought about this use case, and did not know about ticketing date based pricing rule for itinerary changes. Hasn’t worked for me internationally, and I can think of a couple of times it also hasn’t domestically. But if this is a thing, I think it well worthy of changing the approach to certain itineraries. My main own reason for not liking r/t tickets is to not have my return canceled if I miss the outbound. (Don’t ask. 😁 )
LOL — I’ve been there.
Whether or not you can ignore advance purchase requirements when changing the return seems to be dependent upon the fare as well, which is something I just learned today in answering this (so, thanks!) A non-refundable Washington to Tokyo business class ticket allows you to ignore advance purchase requirements when changing the return fare. For some reason, the refundable fare doesn’t have the same provision. It does allow you to use historically filed fares but not with the advance purchase restriction ignored. There’s probably some rationale there regarding people changing the return to a cheaper non-refundable fare once they’ve locked in the outbound date or something.
Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
Perhaps. I am not trying to say there are ghosts in the UA machine, but the “simple” rules appear either poorly thought-out, or so heavily optimized in the airline’s favor, that they ends up screwing the customer. And it is not as simple as current day inventory. When you throw in o/w vs r/t pricing, and the fact that changing your ticket may throw you into another category for pricing purposes, this seems heavily tilted against the buyer. I have several times abandoned the return leg of my international ticket instead of changing it, and buying a new r/t (and abandoned the return leg of that new ticket as well), because it got me home, and ended up costing me less money. I understand this doesn’t happen to everybody, but to have had that experience several times, would indicate (to me, at least) that it is a non-zero probability, which warrants consideration. YMMV.
Throwaway ticketing is technically a violation of the Contract of Carriage, but in this case I think any reasonable person would do the same thing. I’d just hope you’d find a use for the return ticket eventually. I wonder if you’d have better luck with nonrefundable tickets in this case, based upon what I’m seeing in the refundable ticket fare rules.
Originally Posted by
lessthanzero
I would merely want to point out that changing your return on an international ticket may be pricey, and your fare class could also impact that. Not saying this will bring instant joy, but if this change scenario happens, it might be worth checking out a new itinerary with the identical date for going back to (presumably to the US), but picking a return date to wherever you are at some point when prices seem good. (TL;DR Buying two r/t tickets and only using half of each can be a cost saving decision.)
With the caveat that if you do this as a course of habit, UA may decide to come after you. Once or twice is not going to be a problem, and even I, as a stalwart believer that “I signed the contract, I have to abide by it” would take little issue with this. (I’d just hope to find a use for the remaining, thrown-away part later.
)
Originally Posted by
WineCountryUA
You are booking refundable fares? As most domestic RTs are two one-ways, this would make sense for refundable fares.
Without going through the debate again
, UA definitely still offers many domestic round-trip tickets that are priced on a round-trip basis. AFAIK, that can include refundable tickets, depending upon the city pair.