freeflyer2001

I understand that if I see a price of 2000 dollars "roundtrip", in the end I have to pay 2000 dollars, but with United, first time I want to use this airline, I find the roundtrip price in 2000 dollars one way! when it says round trip, and when I go to return, the price of $2000 does not exist, there is another more expensive and in the end supposedly I must pay the most expensive. There is contradiction, incongruity and I would even dare to say that there is deception. If you give a roundtrip price, honored !.

jsloan

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

This hasn't been my experience. Can you provide example cities and dates where you're searching?

narvik

The first price you see is the cheapest return fare.
The second price you see is United's "recommended" flight.
There have been others who criticized United for this.
To see the actual first price offering, simply click on the Economy or Business button to sort pricing, low-to-high, and you should see the original low fare.
The flight might not be ideal, however.
Good luck.

freeflyer2001

From MIA to CPT. Prices change several times per day. Latest was $2046 roundtrip in the first leg, when I clicked this option, the second leg (cpt to Mia) was $2347.... I clicked and finally, the total price was 2347. Of course I did not buy this. Days of travel; 12/21 to 12/28

jsloan

OK, I see exactly what you mean. This isn't normal behavior, but I'm able to reproduce it.

(The price is now about $1000 higher than what you mentioned).

The answer, in this particular case, appears to be some kind of strange inventory / pricing issue on the December 21st flights. Something about the fare is getting recomputed when you make your first selection. I've seen this occasionally with complicated multi-city flights but not with a simple round-trip.

I'd try searching with Google Flights -- its search engine is often better than United's, and if you select United flights, you'll often get a link to purchase the ticket there. I was able to find those dates for $2022.31 -- admittedly, with a 22-hour stop in Vienna -- and the price was correct when it went through to United.com.

Hope this helps...

That was my first thought too, but that's not actually the problem this time. It really isn't returning the lowest fare that it says it will.​​​​​

narvik

Wow, that is strange. It really doesn't like that Dec 21 departure!

mduell

UA.sux fare search is awful, use something better like Google Flights.

Kacee

.com just goes wonky with some fares. I've bumped into this quite a bit with Japan fares.

I agree with those who recommend googleflights. I rarely run searches on .com anymore. You can also see how uncompetitive UA often is. Just booked SFO-BOS on DL/AS in F for $300 less RT than UA wanted.

docbert

It's UA's usual issue with codeshare.

At the moment for those dates it initially shows a ~$3300 fare, but then jumps to $3600 after you select it.

The $3300 fare IS available, but it needs you to book the second leg as an LH flight. UA website won't do that if there's an equivalent UA flight number, so it books the codeshare instead. The problem is that the LH flight has B class available, but the UA codeshare doesn't - so it bumps it up from B to Y for the outbound (and in both cases, S for the return).

If you do it as a multi-city (MIA-MUC, MUC-CPT, CPT-MIA) then it'll let you pick the LH flight for the second leg, and price it at $3300, or even less (just under $3k, M-class) if you go via FRA instead of MUC.

The price is jumping simple because the flights are relatively full - not surprising for the Friday before Christmas.

symphonicman

I can sometimes get a better price by calling an agent. If they're willing, they can force a native LH code on the flights, and then see if it prices.

findark

The query for finding the round-trip price is not the same as the one that gives return flight options. That's the root of the problem.

Gig103

I'm just popping in after seeing this trending thread to say -- excellent investigative work by jsloan and docbert!

TomMM

I've also encountered this. Recently I was pricing flights to MSQ, on the outbound flights the RT price was $1547 but on the return flights the RT price jumped to $2200.

gmt4

freeflyer2001

Thanks! I did the search in google flights but today, was more expensive ($4000+) that united website ($3000+). To check what happened, I opened the British website, and price for my dates was $2400 something and then I checked in google flights for Bristish these dates and price was $5000+. Weird....