Originally Posted by
oswaldjacoby
As a nonelite flyer on United, you will find the experience very unpleasant compared to what you get on SW. You will get a reserved seat, but it will be in the back of the plane, and the leg room will be much less than what you are used to on SW. You will have to pay to check your luggage, and if you need to change your itinerary, you will be subjected to a $150 penalty, compared to $0 penalty on SW. While 1k and GS get generally good customer service on United, as a nonpremium flyer, the customer service will be generally quite horrible. It is almost as if United personal are directed to treat nonelite passengers as if they are unimportant. If there is an irregularity, there will be little effort to reaccomodate you--with lengthy lines at customer service--and you may even be told that as a nonpremium customer, you must call the call center in India for reaccomodation.
Best of luck on your trip.
It's a bit misleading to point to UA charging a $150 itin change fee vs $0 on SouthWest. On SW, while it's true the value of your ticket is preserved, you may still have to pay a very healthy sum of money to change to a different flight on the same day. Let's say you bought a "web" special fare for $39 for an 8am flight, but you wanted to take an 11am flight instead. It's possible the cheapest fare on that 11am flight might be $159, so you'd end up paying a difference of $120. On United, you can standby (on the same day) for free, or do a confirmed standby for, not sure, $25?
So Southwest is generally better if your travel plans change big-time (as in rescheduling a trip), but if you want to change your flight to a different time on the same day, United has it all over Southwest.
By the way, you need to be a bit more careful posting in this forum. There's a special set of rules here, not posted anywhere to see, but generally adhered to. One of those rules is that you're not allowed to say anything nice about Southwest/WN.