crazychicken

Hi,
Almost a year ago I was denied boarding for a booked flight and received a travel voucher. While the old Continental vouchers can be redeemed via the web, customer service told me that I will have to go to a ticket office to use the United one (at least here in the UK). So, I made a 65mile trip to Heathrow Airport only to find out that the exact same itinerary that I found on the United website, and which wanted to book, is about US$180 more expensive at the ticket desk. The desk clerk said that he cannot get a better price hence the voucher became almost useless!
What a rip-off!
I contacted CS and am awaiting a reply...

Would it be worth trying to get a refund for the booked ticket and rebooking via the web? The flights are in October, so there is still plenty of availability.

teddybw

Ticketing is sometimes tricky. Two PNRs with the same flights do NOT necessarily price out the same result.

You could refund the ticket within 24 hours of original ticketing time. Otherwise, it will be hard to get your money back.

RobOnLI

If you book a flight over the phone and ask the agent to hold it while you go to the airport and use your voucher the airfare will not change. Generally speaking you have a day to get to the airport to turn in the voucher.

If, however, you looked up the price online and didn't book it but then drove to the airport to book the ticket the airport can only give you the then-current price. It's entirely conceivable that the price increased by the time you drove to the airport. It's also possible that the airport is only looking at certain flights or certain codes and the website/phone agents are able to price out something cheaper.

Rule of thumb with those vouchers is always call and have the reservation put on hold which locks in the price - then either drive to the airport and get the ticket issued with the vouchers as payment or mail the vouchers to the appropriate address.

-RM

Boghopper

But with a hold I've always been told that the price is not guaranteed until ticketing. I haven't seen it actually go up, but if there were a fare change would the ticket price change?

avidflyer

This. I just did it last week. Call the 1k desk, have them hold the res. Give the folks at the airport the locator and you are done. Worked like a charm.

todorovic

I would add that IME phone reservation agents sometimes can't see the prices available online. What I have done in those cases was to talk to web support (they are the human equivalent of a web site) and have them put the reservation on hold until I have time to purchase it at the airport. Alternatively, you can mail in the vouchers but that may not be an option if you live overseas. The trick in all these interactions with CS is to mention at the beginning that you will be using the VDB vouchers (bump vouchers). I believe that this actually locks the price of the ticket.

zrs70

For a whole host of reasons, I would never even think of building an itinerary at the airport ticket counter. They are so busy. It's very helpful to have the PNR is hand, fare stored, and itinerary set to go.

RobOnLI

Yes. The fare is "held" or "locked" until the ticket is issued. The reservations agent can put any timeline they want on the hold but if you are bringing the vouchers to the airport it's generally 24 hours. If you're mailing the vouchers it's generally a week.

After you book the reservation on the phone you can look it up on united.com and it will clearly say at the top something like "This reservation is being held until February 3, 2012 2:00pm".

-RM

avidflyer

Depends on the ticket and airport. I live in LA and arrived Sat am on a flight from BOS. I had one more book of $400 VDBs and decided to do it while I was at the airport. I used the iPhone to find what I wanted for flights and went to the ticket counter. I just told her the dates and flight numbers. At LAX there is a dedicated "Future ticketing" desk and the woman had me out of there in 5 minutes.

olydan1

Do you run into the issue of having to book a higher fare to use the travel certificates though? That seems to always be my problem!

aztimm

Not sure how this ended up in the US Airways forum, but as this appears to be a United issue, I'm moving this to the United forum.



aztimm

pinniped

Weird: I'm seeing this thread in the US Airways Dividend Miles forum. Since nobody else is asking what this has to do with DM, I assume it's a glitch.

Anyway, if it's a web only fare, I've been able to have United.com web support (phone agents) put the fare on hold for me to take the voucher to the airport. Even in my non-1K years, the airport has then processed the voucher, ticketing the held PNR, with no junk fees added.

Even with the PNR booked, it can take the counter agents some time to process these. I have used probably every type of UA voucher that regular pax can get, and some of them require the counter agent to pick up a phone and call their internal helpdesk to process.

One time I was exchanging an existing reservation *and* using a voucher *and* using SWU's to upgrade. That seemed to cause a bunch of problems...it took me almost an hour to get the whole thing ticketed. Fortunately, I had purposely picked a slow period at a small airport to do it, and the agent waived the $150 change fee on the original ticket for my troubles.

There is also a mail-in process for vouchers where they'll supposedly allow the ticket to be held a reasonable amount of time to receive the voucher. I've never done that and I don't know if they'd have a UK address or ask you to Fedex it to the US. Totally agree that not being able to do these online is a bad process for both the pax and the employees at the airports.

avidflyer

Nope in fact the ticket I bought this week was a $161 LAX-SFO RT and that is the lowest fare out there.

exerda

This used to be a much bigger problem than it is today.

The majority of UA vouchers do not require a particular fare class. The DBCFREE ones (good for a free trip in the continental US) do IIRC require inventory in a particular class (W?), but the VDB (type B) vouchers are good on any published fare.

Likewise, the typical CS e-certs issued via appreciation certificate, complaints, etc., are good on all published fares.