My view is a little different and a little less pessimistic. With screen-scraping approaches, every time the provider (in this case UA) changes the process for clicking through to find rewards there has to be a corresponding change made to the software that does the screen scraping. I suspect that this is what's happened. It will just be a matter of KVS bringing their end up to date.

It is quite difficult for the likes of UA to deny access permanently to screen scrapers.

Aside from any technical difficulty of blocking KVS, denying customers who are using their own login credentials and KVS as an access method is effectively stating that COdbaUA will only serve certain types of browsers but not others, even though no concession is required on the CO end to allow access. Although this is certainly within their "rights" it would be (yet another) amazingly open, in-your-face customer unfriendly gesture.

Yup - assuming this is the case, United's War on Elites (and Information) continues :td:

Hope KVS finds a workaround:confused:

Not only did KVS remove reference to the UA upgrade and extra award classes from the User Guide page but the screen shot of the method has also been removed from the Screenshots page. The Fare Listings via [FC] screen shot is even still there and that method was removed from the app a while ago. Looks like UA upgrades aren't coming back anytime soon.

Very disappointing that the company is devoting resources to limiting access to information its customers need while failing to fix other major problems such as the upgrade wait list operation.

How do you know that's what they are doing? It's extremely common for screen-scraping approaches to fall over from time to time when the company providing the information (in this case UA) changes something. The screen-scraping company (in this case KVS) needs to modify their implementation.

Occam's Razor - they did it with EF (and other sites), what else is it likely to be?

This is an airline that has shown a severe inability to grow topline revenues, so instead they focus on the margins, on the revenue side (ancillary fees) but more dramatically on the cost side (ever-diminishing soft product, clawing back miles, going after information sources, etc.)

I just hope KVS can find another work-around like it did last year.

To understand this you need to understand how the technology works. I have tried to explain and have perhaps failed. I gave it my best shot.

While I understand a "technology change" can change things...there's been no observation of anything different with the web site and the like, nor any service disruptions, etc.

Plus, given the removal of some of the UA language from the KVS site, past efforts by UA to shut these 3rd party sites down, plus a general ongoing "attack" on it's most loyal / frequent customers...it's simply the most logical explanation that it's deliberate.

I hope to be proven wrong however...

And add to that the almost complete silence by KVS here (other than saying it is currently unavailable)....

I also would be delighted to be shown wrong, and I very clearly understand the idea that some change on UA's site could inadvertently have created the problem. However, as others have noted, there is reason for pessimism. KVS's silence makes me wonder if it has received legal correspondence and of course UA monitors this board and could clarify the situation readily if it wished to do so.

KVS I have a question. Can I see custom point of sales unlike EF? I'll like to know if I can accurately display availability for Venezuela. Thanks.

Here's hoping that KVS shares some more info regarding the Awards-Upgrades/UA situation...at $75/year, the least that they could do is keep us informed.

+1, I was thinking the same thing as I was going to this thread this AM

I think most of us are thinking the worst here - we don't need to know all the issues, but a simple "it's a technical issue" vs. "I'm having *discussions* with UA" would suffice for now.