Originally Posted by Paolo01

There has been quite a bit of talk on this scattered across several threads over the past couple of months, so I thought that I would relay my experience.

Two weeks ago I had to fly IAD to FRA on UA metal. I entered the IAD RCC and was immediately offered two RCC drink chits (grey paper chits) by the IAD RCC greeter. She had quite a line of people she was greeting. She addressed everybody by name after looking at their boarding pass and offered two chits to all. She did not hand them to you, but offered and if you accepted, she returned them with your BP. There was one gentleman in front of me who was flying with a coworker who asked for his co workers chits when she said that she did not want hers. The greeter simply handed him four chits.

The RCC was quite full, the bar tenders were doing their best to keep up with the flow of tickets and such. By the way, there were lots of the Blue perforated edge chits (1K kits) on the counter that people were using for drinks at the RCC bar.

There was another Uniformed UA representative wondering through the club handing out grey chits to those who had missed them at the door and were now trying to figure out how to get a drink. (There were lots of those)

I kept my grey chits and boarded a few hours later to FRA. Once airborne and during the drink service (in Y, my upgrade did not clear), I asked for a beer and handed my grey chit over and it was not even studied. My beer arrived immediately. Later in the flight, I stood up and walked back to the kitchen area and asked another FA for a beer, she came back with it and asked me for my $5 and I handed another grey chit over which was immediately accepted.

That is only one experience but service seemed to be the theme for this flight, not cross examining drink chit colors. YMMV

A side note, I was really surprised by the number of blue chits used in the RCC when there were grey chits for the asking through any number of the agents.