I managed to get a great deal flying from Newark Airport in NYC to Raleigh NC. The flight was under $200 and I was quite happy about finding it. Unfortunately when I got to the airport UA counter, my suitcase was overweight. The night before I had dutifully gone online to check in and paid $25 for my one suitcase. Now at the airport I had to slide my suitcase onto a scale with an ATM-looking electronic device attached to it. There were several there for passengers to weigh their luggage. I did so and found that my suitcase was over the 50 lb limit. I had assumed it might be but since I had no scale at home I was prepared to pay the additional charge for the extra weight. But I was shocked to find that the charge was $125.00 (in addition to the $25 already online) for anything over 50 lbs. It didn't matter whether it was one pound or twenty pounds. THAT is ridiculous and highway robbery to have to pay $150.00 for one suitcase that was overweight!! Later I searched the UA website to see if I had missed a glaring warning that overweight luggage would cost so much and there was NO mention of this....only a mention that additional charges would apply for any luggage overweight. I'm sorry but this is excessive! I am a senior and could not afford to pay this but I did as I had no choice. I had taken a shuttle to the airport so I couldn't even empty some of the contents and store it in my car. I will never fly UA again for this reason. That is taking advantage of the customer. I have continued to search the UA website for plain English where the passenger is told about this excessive charge but have yet to find it. No doubt it is buried somewhere in the fine print but that is no excuse for this type of robbery. I shouldn't have to be a frequent flyer to be treated fairly. Do I have ANY recourse for this charge?

First of all, by how much was it over? If it was a few pounds, you could challenge them to show if the calibration of the scale used was checked and approved by the New Jersey Office of Weights and Measures. Usually airlines have rather generous tolerances (2-5lb) because the equipment they use is not certified...

Like it or not, every airline has overweight baggage fees.

Could you have taken out a coat or other heavy item which you could have worn? Shoes?

First off I agree that the fees are excessive so I sympathize with you there.

In terms of being transparent though - United does do a pretty good job. If you put EWR - RDU into the baggage calculator they have on their checked baggage website it nicely lays out the fees and then has a click button that then shows additional fees beyond the standard $25 for a 50lb pound.

That being said the calculator itself actually says that the overweight fee for EWR - RDU is only $100 extra if under 70 pounds. If you got charged more as noted above I would file a CC charge-back and simply print out the information from their website (link is below) and you ought to be refunded at least down to $100 from the $125. I would also email United with a complaint and attach a PDF of the website to show the overcharge. Based on the calculator you should've paid a total of $125 - $25 for bag fee + $100 extra for overweight but under 70 pounds.

Going forward I would suggest buying a luggage scale from Amazon. You can get them for under $10 and while they might not be 100% accurate they do a good job of giving you a general sense of whether you are close to the 50 pound limit. I have one that I always use with my checked bag to get a sense of whether weight might be an issue.

The baggage calculator for United is here: https://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/tra...edBaggage.aspx

Depending on how far over your bag was, you might send in a note to UA asking for some consideration. Don't expect any and don't criticize the fees as "highway robbery." They are not. You won't find them significantly different on other carriers as carriers charge approximately the same for heavy bags to discourage passengers from using them.

Pity here is that if you knew that your bag was overweight (or likely to be overweight), a second bag would only have cost $35.

As others note, if you were only a few pounds over, it pays to either pull out a heavy coat or boots or to swap some heavy stuff from your checked bag to your carry on and the light stuff from your carry on to your checked.

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Also, if you bought your ticket through United's web site, at the bottom of your confirmation email it says quite clearly what the checked bag fees are and what the applicable weight limit is.

There is little you can do about this now, but I recommend you go to Amazon and buy a handheld luggage scale. They cost about $8. I bought one a while ago and its super helpful to make sure I stay within the limits, particularly when I travel with my golf clubs and other weird/potentially heavy things.