hulagrrl210

A few weeks ago I used miles to book an award ticket (for 2 people) from SMF to SJD in Sept. I get an email confirmation with all the flights. 105,000 taken from my account (only one way was saver) + $152 and some change for taxes/fees. As you can imagine I was a little confused/ not happy when I logged in and checked my reservations that it now show I have a r.t. ticket to Los Angeles instead. No Mexico flights. So I called United about it, turns out they are cancelling all their flights to SJD (Thanks for letting me know that guys!). Between now and then 7 days a week flights are going to 4 days a week to 1 day a week. The best they have been able to offer me if different dates and a flight on US airways with an overnight in PHX (my expense). Other than that they said there is first class availability on US airways, but they can't give that to me. Nothing on Continental, or via SFO, or via DEN.

So here's how I feel- I booked a ticket with them, they confirmed it, they should honor it. I still would like to go to Cabo. Worst case scenario would be cancelling my trip, and getting a full refund which I don't want to do. Just wondering what all my options are...any suggestions?

LIH Prem

Cabo should be a relatively cheap fare, isn't it? Why not just cancel that award ticket (for 105k miles you could get a much better award to Europe or Asia in C or F anyway) and pay cash for this flight on whichever carrier will get you there at a reasonable price?

Just saying ...

-David

rankourabu

You spent 105,000 miles + $152 for a coach ticket on route where a ticket costs <$400 bought with cash

This would be a great opportunity to bail out, get your money/points back, pay $250 more and book a ticket on US with cash.

How long is the journey? 4-5 hours?

For comparison, you have a value of 0.2 cents per miles on your trip. You can get at least 20x the value on an international premium class ticket.

hulagrrl210

just to clarify, 2 tickets, sorry. that would be like $800 cash that i'm not looking to spend right now

What I booked was saver one way, standard the other for 2 people @ 52,500 miles each. taxes we about $75 each ($152, total)

While I do appreciate your suggestions, I don't want to go to Europe. I'm already going to Asia. I'd really just like to know how to make United honor what I have.

cordelli

They don't fly there, there's not much they can do. You can take the miles back and try for another one of the star alliance flights, but doesn't sound like there are many choices there.

sbm12

I'm guessing that you're going to have trouble convincing them to put the flights back on the schedule.

Beyond that, your best bet is to find another option on CO or UA metal and have the UA folks make the necessary calls to IM/RM to make the seat available. Otherwise they're fully within their rights to cancel the ticket and refund you whatever you've paid. The CoC is rather heavily stilted against the customer.

hulagrrl210

HAHA! Very funny! No, I was thinking more along the lines of them getting me a ticket on CO or US.

Here's the thing that really gets me. They DIDN'T cancel my ticket. They didn't notify me of any schedule change. They just decided to send me to LAX instead.

My husband is the one who caught this when he was logged into our accounts looking at our itineraries.

Anyway 1hr 26 minutes later on the phone with them, I got SMF-PHX-SJD, SJD-PHX-LAX-SMF for 35,000 each (full saver award, so I saved some miles) 2 weeks earlier mostly on US. Pretty annoying that they couldn't pull a revenue seat to put me on a direct PHX-SMF flight on the return, but they were nice enough to waive the change fee Thanks United! ^

On a separate note, I don't have seat assignments yet on the US portions. Any suggestions on which side to sit going to/from Cabo?

sbm12

It is VERY rare to get them to open seats up on a partner; that's why I suggested looking for CO/UA metal reroutes that would work. It is way easier to convince them to give you seats on a flight that doesn't have award inventory when they control the inventory.

PhlyingRPh

Glad you got it sorted, but you know, you could have gone to Europe for a few more miles (just kidding).

If you sit in an F seat (as in DEF) you will get a nice view of the inner baja coast and La Paz. Hope you have a nice trip and that you take lots of airborne pics.

hulagrrl210

Thanks. Yeah, that is what I first suggested to the lady when I called actually. United is completely getting rid of their flights to Cabo (LAX,SFO,DEN and I'm guessing if not ORD, that wouldn't have been an acceptable routing anyway) and the connections on CO through IAH were really bad.

In the end, everything worked out, and I actually saved some miles, but how often does this happen when they just change your reservation (to another city) like without letting you know? First for me...

Thank you!
I assume ABC on the way back then?

PhlyingRPh

Yes.

BTW, I base my advice on a flight from the old Stapleton Airport in DEN to Cabo many years ago. I would imagine it's the same flight path as that from PHX down the coast to Cabo.

Dajones2001

It makes for a longer trip but ask them to book you on CO thru IAH. They make that run a couple times daily

HikerT

Just happened to us on a *A award last year. US canceled our SEA-PHL redeye en route to PUJ and booked us on a flight leaving SEA 8 hours earlier and connecting in PHX on a redeye connecting in PHL to PUJ. They never bothered to call and let know. I only found out by looking up the reservation. After getting that snafu sorted out, a few months later another one of the legs was canceled. At least they called me that time. Worked out great as we got a stopover in PHL over Thanksgiving out of it.

skywalkerLAX

I would have said, go to the airport as planned and have them deal with it on day of departure. If nobody notified you United would have been responsible for rebooking you onto another carrier, worst case scenario (for them) in a revenue booking class.

However, now things are well and you got some miles back. That is a good thing, but I can understand you got more than annoyed by this.

Sometimes it might be a better face value to save up for a Business Class ticket but not everyone has thousands of disposable cash laying around - a thing people forget sometimes.

Enjoy Cabo!

SFOtoORD

It is hard for people here sometimes to get out of FF Point Economics mode and to actually understand that sometimes people just want to go where they want to go and use whatever points it takes to get there.