Do I miss the memo that Platinms can pay to ug to F for a lower fee than non status
I'm at T-3 days and no upgrade yet
Three ofus traveling all originally on one record which I split and all in same COS
When I check the records I am being offered to buy up to F for $207. My DH and DS are being offered the buy up at $378. Everything is the same except my status and their lack of
Why 2 different buy ups on the same fare classes booked at the same time
Strange

I am by no means an expert but I imagine your buy-up price is to M as a plat, and their buy-up price is to a B-Up for non-elites.

You're likely being offered a buy-up for 20.7 tens of dollars to an M or B fare, while your family is getting the 37.8 tens offer for a true FC fare (Z, D, etc.).

As this post (among many others) shows, CO may keep LOWERING the cost of the buy-up as it gets closer to flight time. This makes perfect sense - why give something (promised) away for free when you can grab a few more hundreds of pennies?

If at first you don't succeed (with your high price), try (low), try (lower), and try (lowest!) again.

Or, instead of taking one post that is lacking in details, it might be useful to actually take the time to understand what's going on. But that's no fun, is it?

Sure - feel free to question a CO Platinum who's been on FT for 10 years. Call me crazy, but I find it hard to doubt his story (as it seems to be replicated daily on FT). It's nothing out of the ordinary - and he gives a rich amount of details actually (different dates, routes, dollar amounts, etc). But you go ahead and deny it if you want.

It's great that with your advanced tools, you can dig into the minutae of non-stop versus connecting flights, multiple fares in the same bucket, buy-ups to different fare classes depending on status level, etc.

But for the 99.99% of travelers who don't have the time, inclination, and access, they call a spade a spade and wonder why CO acts like a two-bit huckster trying to pry $ out of their wallet up until the plane pulls away from the gate.

I'm not denying it. I'm suggesting that it might actually be completely within the real of the rules as they exist in the program rather than completely random.

As a CO Platinum who has also been on FT for 10 years I wonder why you see fit to completely discount the specific and coherent evidence I can offer versus the less specific and coherent "details" of another post.

Can the price of an upgrade change? Absolutely. Generally it is related to whether ZE inventory is available or not rather than some whimsical fancy of CO changing published fares on a day-to-day basis.

Yeah, I guess it is great that I actually understand it and keep explaining it. The fact that you keep suggesting there is no rational explanation and that all the documented facts on offer are irrelevant and offer no insight is sadly misleading and, quite frankly, wrong.

But keep at it. You're certainly helping to forward the level of knowledge here in the community, even if it is just by having me constantly repeat the fact that the FUD you're spewing is wrong.

To you, they may fit the "rules" of the program - to virtually everyone else, they seem completely random.


Of course it can change - everyone knows airline pricing is dynamic. What would be more logical is for the price of a buy-up to increase the closer you get to departure time - as scarcity generally increases price (assuming the F cabin starts to fill up). When you see the price drop every time you check back, Occam's Razor says it's a desperate attempt to get something, ANYTHING as opposed to giving something away for free.


I'm not doubting your ability to give facts - I commend you on it. Yet every day there seems to be a new factor causing more confusion/frustration - first it's the connecting fare bucket issue, now it's multiple fares in the same fare bucket. Who knows what's next.

Stay classy by the way - the FUD you speak of is clearly already festering in the CO community, and was long before I started spending more time on the forum. When most PPlats say their program is a bust, when you hear tales of countless other Plats questioning the value of their status, and you hear the latest "enhancement" that someone knows we're just gonna love - all the charts and explanations don't do much. But keep defending, it's amusing.

Which is why I keep trying to explain the rules. When you and others keep insisting they do not exist it doesn't particularly help further the knowledge of the community.

While at the same time continually suggesting that there is no real basis in the facts that I keep offering. So which is it?

You're certainly not helping the cause of actually improving the knowledge.

Absolutely untrue.

Explaining is very different from defending. Is that really so difficult to comprehend?

Yes, the sheer joy of PPlats and the benefits they get from spending $30K on this airline is clear

You're right, I hate helping people and improve the knowledge

You always have an endless supply of facts, which is great - but you're explaining a moving, myopic target.

When you attach yourself to the cause of explaining something that only continues to cause anger, frustration, and confusion (without ever questioning it), sorry, it inevitably sounds like defending.

I've learned a great deal from sbm12's posts. At first I hated the whole buy-up program, because I didn't understand it and felt it was an erosion of benefits. Now that I understand the logic that's behind it, I've figured out how to use it to my advantage. Does it occassionally aggravate me? Sure. But life goes on.

The OP almost undoubtedly was offered a lower buy-up fare as a Plat because it was putting him into an M or B fare, which is companion wasn't able to access as a non-elite. Why the diatribe? It's very simple to understand.

I have to say that I've learned nothing from your posts, except that you're blatantly biased for some reason that's beyond my comprehension, you add nothing constructive to the community, and I should probably add you to my ignore list. Sorry. Just calling a spade a spade.

Except the target isn't moving. It's been pretty well defined and, while not concretely definitive via press release or post from CO Insider, there is enough group observation evidence to strongly support the facts as they are understood today.

Your refusal to accept this reality and substitute your own wherein you're free to behave in a manner that is counter-intuitive and unproductive is waxing old. There is no vast alien conspiracy to rob you of upgrades, and no one owes you complete transparency on any subject. You're a customer buying a product and nothing more.

Heh, moving target...

Come on guys, play nice.
Sorry I brought the question up if everybody is going to go after each other.
You know 'tis the season and all that carp.....

I agree. The question has been asked and answered. Perhaps it's time for a moderator to close this thread.

The "diatribe" wasn't targeted at the OP in this forum - I referenced another poster's example of a buy-up target that did actually move by the day (which, if you believe that poster, and we have no reason to, you could call "facts" in that they showed the target wasn't "so well defined"). But I guess this is a separate "reality" (even though we consistently hear similar examples).

I'm flying the metal where UGs are processed intuitively, and I'm not asked for more $ to play the Prisoner's Dilemma game. My fear (backed up by many others daily, speficially longtime, loyal Plats and newly crowned PPlats) is that the new UA evolves into a series of short-sighted, transactional processes. Not too "counter-intuitive" to me.