Many months ago, I told the concierges in the PDX RCC that I still had loads of paper certs and they have always remembered to ask me whether I still had paper certs each and every time I checked in. They are a fairly competent gang in general, and they have never deducted ecerts without telling me. I finally used up the remainder of my paper certs last Tuesday.

Ecerts were once deducted by accident in MIA but this was caught right away and they successfully reversed the process.

Last September, I successfully convinced customer service to extend the life of some recently expired HK9s for a couple more weeks. They were very courteous about the while thing but it was very clear to me that this nice gesture was to be considered a very rare event.

Incidentally, several previous threads have discussed transferring E500s to other travelers who are not travelling with you. I discussed this topic with one of the agents at the Washington Square, OR CTO about a week ago and was told in no uncertain terms that they can be transferred precisely the same way as the EHK49s, i.e. presenting oneself ahead of time at a CTO or UA concierge and signing for the transfer. They seemed quite certain about this and have not furnished me with erroneous advice previously.