Saturday night I wanted to take advantage of a very good fare for son's Christmas travel, DEN-SFO-BOI-DEN Itn.net showed one particular set of flights $100+ cheaper than most of the other options. So, at about 7:30 Pacific time, I call PremEx reservations and ask the CSR to fare those flights. She comes up with the same good price. I ask if I put the reservation on hold, will the price be good until midnight Sunday night (I needed to use VDB vouchers to ticket at the airport on Sunday). She said no, the price was only good until midnight Saturday night, Phoenix time (11 p.m. California time). She said I should go ahead an make the reservation and call back at 11:01pm California time to ask that it again be re-fared and re-held. So I made the reservation and got the PNR.

Then at 11:03 pm California time, I called PremEx reservations again. I explained what I wanted to do and this time the CSR said, no, that's not right, because the time on the record (and hence the the local "end of the day" that the price is held for depends on whatever local time zone "touches" the record last. And since he was in the Honolulu call center, he said that the mere fact of his having opened the record made it a Saturday , 9pm (Hawaii time) reservation whose price would only therefore be good until the end of the "day." He said "You need to talk to somebody in Chicago; they're about the only ones besides HNL who are getting calls this time of day. He suggested calling again (the first time I've had UA itself suggest the call back and get another CSR ploy) and asking if the CSR was in the Chicago call center so that when he "touched" the record it would be shown as Sunday's date, not Saturday's.

So once again, I did. The very nice CSR seemed non-plussed at my question of "Are you in the Chicago call center?" He said "No, I'm in Detroit." Even further east So I explained what I wanted to do, referenced the PNR, he re-fared it (same price; phew!), and told me the price was now good until Sunday night at midnight. I didn't ask midnight where..... By this time, as the old Monthy Python sketch has it "My brain hurts."

It all ends well in that I indeed ticketed the itin this morning when transitting ONT.

I have no idea of the degrees of fact in any of UA's responses above, but thought you might find it interesting.