VegasGambler

That's a good point; very different from my previous situation.

I don't understand why this isn't a problem with UA. What's the difference exactly?

The original discussion was about whether a ticket that was bought partially with a credit and partially with cash could have the cash part refunded. It sounds like this deosn't apply to your situation so I'm not quite sure I'm getting your point.

newaliases

Couldn't you get to the same results (i.e. prevent abuse by consumers) in a more fair, consumer-friendly way by refunding everything back to original form of payment?

Or at least making it clear in all the written materials? Base on this thread alone, it's obvious this came as a surprise to many people.

Hipplewm

Yes, slightly outside of the scope of the OP - but UA will refund your ticket if it is <24hours since you bought it under any circumstances, even with a ETC plus cash - even a non refundable ticket and all funds go back to original form of payment

AA follows the DOT rule, so if you buy a ticker <48 hours from the flight, it is not refundable, even if you bought a refundable ticket. In the OP case iirc, he used flight credits/cash (cc) and then tried to get a refund, which had a double whammy in that he was <24hrs, but within 48hrs of the flight, so non refundable is exactly that, in addition I don't think AA treats flight credits the same as UA - once you use flight credits the entire tickets payments takes on the form of the most restrictive part of payment

It is all nuances and Bull^%$# - we need a EU261 equivalent in the USA to prevent airlines from walking over people and establish a baseline of service - but it will never happen

VegasGambler

I don't think that's true.. refundable tickets are always refundable, aren't they?

For non-refundable tickets they go above and beyond the DOT requirement by offering a hold as well as a refund, and also offer the refund for tickets bought more than 2 days before departure (DOT requires 7)

But yes you are right, if you buy a nonrefundable ticket within 2 days of departure there is no 24 hr grace period.

United's published policy matches the DOT requirement -- you must purchase 7 or more days prior to departure to be eligible for a refund within 24hr. So AA is much more generous, at least in their published policy. I'm not sure what UA does in practice or if status plays into it.

https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...ng-policy.html

We know that life happens, and you may need to change your travel plans unexpectedly. United's 24-hour flexible booking policy gives you the freedom to make changes to select reservations within 24 hours of booking and ticketing, without being charged change fees if you made your purchase one week or more before the flight was scheduled to depart. This includes canceling your reservation and requesting a full refund of the ticket price. Although Basic Economy reservations aren’t eligible for changes within 24 hours, they’re still eligible for a full refund if you cancel within 24 hours and you made your purchase one week or more before the flight was scheduled to depart. Please view the terms and conditions below for more details.

Lux Flyer

Yes, but there is a loophole in UA's ancient reservation system that doesn't enforce the 7 day requirement, nor 24-hours exactly, which is what the earlier poster was alluding to, how they could buy non-refundable on UA and refund it 36+ hours later, while they're forced to buy a refundable on AA in order to guarantee they get a full refund beyond 24 hours (or just not fly AA). UA's system doesn't look at the time it was ticketed, just at the ticketing date, so you could buy a ticket at 12:01 AM on 6/11/2021, for a flight on 6/13, and refund it up until 11:59PM on 6/12/2021, almost a full 48 hours later, and well within the 7 day cutoff that the policy specifies. My impression is this is a consequence of their 20+ year old software only checking the ticketing date, and that they are in the process of progressively rolling out a new web browser based reservation management system ("Navigator") that will be more strict on checking against the flexible booking policy when requesting a refund (among other improvements). As long as the old software they use is available, the loophole will exist if they go to process the refund that way, but I expect as it gets phased out, the loophole will close to more closely reflect the actual policy.

hhdl

DL's explicit policy is the one UA effectively uses: no 7-day limit and 24 hours means 23:59 of the calendar day after purchase or right up to departure.