I got an E certificate from United and am having difficulties using it. (United has found a way to reduce e certificate liabilities; hence the generosity of giving them out like candies for irr ops.) I called up unit.com support. The guys gave me some half baked answer. (FT guys on United forum have better answers.) I thanked him and was ready to hang up. He told me that I might be surveyed after the call and he wanted to know the score. He then told me that if the score is not 5 out 5 (or perfect score) he will have to transfer me to his boss and that he will look bad. I suspect by transferring me to his boss removes my call from the survey stack.

This is a first for me. An agent actually demands a perfect satisfaction survey score before he would let me do the survey. Amazing. This is what we get to look forward to. The management will think those guys in India are perfect when in reality they only allow happy customers to do the survey. I should have lied, tell him he is 5, and proceed to do an honest survey.

.bomb strokes again -- droppin' bombs on your moms...

.bomb is WAY better than DL.com.


.bomb is also spectacular at offering you chances to spend more money.


As for the phone call, I also would have said a 5, then given them a 1. It sounds like the manager is colluding to keep the scores of his call center up, for obvious reasons.

Not quite sure what the problem is here as I just redeemed two certs for domestic travel.

If you'd like to post the flights you're looking at I'll be glad to see if I can figure out what the issue is.

As for .bomb in general, at first I was not a fan of the site (I think they were the last major US carrier to allow seat assignments via the web) but there are some interesting things the site will do (i.e. upgrades) and once you learn the quirks, it's really not that bad.

Anyways, feel free to put up some more info (or shoot me a PM) and I'll see if I can figure out why it's not working.

I'm guessing they are Type B and cannot be used online. Quite annoying, really.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 8.12; MSIEMobile 6.0) 320x240; VZW; UTStar-XV6175; Window Mobile 6.1 Standard

This complaint could have been completely avoided had UA never given you an ecert .

Could be -- type B certs (for those following along those are what you get for VDBs) must be redeemed at a UA ticket office (read airport) or by mail.

However, per the OP, he was working with an ecert which can only be redeemed online.

Annoying indeed. But I'll take a UA $400 paper VDB over one a chintzy CO $150 VDB e-cert any day.

Which makes me wonder, perhaps the paper allows UA to be more generous with VDB compensation if there's higher breakage.

And you were nearly twice as likely to receive such on UA than on CO despite only 30% more passenger enplanements.

There is at least one thread about this already in the UA forum (in other words, it's not a unique experience).

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ng-reason.html

I am curious, though - how does this relate to CO?