Mabuk dan gila

I'm on 12 hours without ticketing AGAIN on an award ticket booked on united.com. I already lost this reservation once due to CA canceling my flights due to United's failure to ticket the reservation. This is really unbelievable. I'm not asking for much, I just want my reservation to ticket before CA cancels it AGAIN due to UA not ticketing.

Widespread, and long term failure to even be able to issue many tickets isn't just a glitch in the system. That is practically total melt down. Issuing a ticket should be about the most fundamental skill for an airline.

I'm trying to figure out how I can fit an hours long call into my busy day today to try to get this straitened out.

sliohio

In the past week I have been calling United A MILLION times to ask them to ticket my award reservation, but every time an agent would tell me "wait for 24 hours", or "the ticketing department has thousands of tickets to issue so they only issue tickets that would depart soon."

Well yesterday a segment (ANA) got dropped off my reservation.
I called in to ask the agent to add it back, they did manage to add it back but the reservation was still not ticketed.

This morning I called again and finally found someone who was willing to help me push through. The agent put me on hold for almost an hour, asked for my PIN, tried calling two different persons at the ticketing department, and finally came back with "I've got good news, despite of being very busy, they worked on your reservation and had it ticketed."

so, I agree with the previous posts, don't take no for an answer. Keep calling until you find someone who is willing to help.

cjermain

Last night I made several award/revenue bookings. These were simple, United-only, domestic tickets.

The revenue bookings ticketed within 30 minutes. One award booking ticketed in around 5 hours, the other in around 8 hours. The 3 hours difference is a bit strange since the bookings were the same city pairs, made minutes after one another... the only difference being the travel days.

This is longer than one might expect (or hope) but not long enough to really screw anything up.

kenhawk

Someone may have alread posted this link, but it explains this data conversion mess quite clearly:

http://http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/business-travel/2012/03/12/united-airlines-computer-switch-stumbles

Mabuk dan gila

The real crisis is not tickets on UA flights unless travel is eminent. If you book a flight 3 weeks from now on UA metal, presumably they could hold the reservation unticketed, hold the seats open, and so long as they eventually got around to ticketing it by flight day, you would make your flight. United can fix those, because it's their seats and their reservation.

The HUGE problem is partner airlines. Partners aren't going to wait around forever with an unticketed reservation on their plane. If UA doesn't ticket a reservation within a reasonable period of time, the partner airline is simply going to drop the reservation and return the seat to inventory and make it available to someone else. It may then be gone for good and it's not like UA can just call up the partner airline and demand the seat be made available again, so there may be no possible resolution at all in some of those kind of cases. Customer is just SOL.

mre5765

I booked two tickets on March 3, and 36 hours later they had not ticketed. A call to the 1K line on March 4 (20 minute wait) got them ticketed within minutes, and interestingly, at a lower fare.

As long as this lasts, I consider it a feature. You essentially get to lock a fare for free, and then can track the fare daily until it reaches a low point that is too hard to resist, and then ticket.

Or if it rises, ticket, and demand the fare quoted at time of purchase.

Good for me, sucks for the UCH shareholder.

Seriously, this is going to affected United's bottom line, because united.com can no longer sell a ticket. It might affect it in a positive way because UCH is holding all that money for tickets it has no intention of issuing, and refunds to kettles will likely take weeks. And if most of those tickets are bought via Chase, Chase will not want to irritate its primary airline partner with charge backs.

kmfdm91

If you consider this a 'feature' wait until it happens with a *A award ticket, or the fare goes UP in the meantime and you have to fight tooth and nail with the agents on getting your fare...that won't be fun with you.

I have the experience with a *A ticket not being ticketed by PMCO for over a month. Not fun and the hours I spent on the phone were not a good use of my time. Of course, it worked out for me, but I don't think everyone has the same tenacity as I do...it showed me the bad things that were/are coming by using SHARES and PMCO policies, first hand.

-jeremy

ACK1

So last Wednesday purchased a flight from ORD-LAX. As of today it still has not been ticketed. I don't have a receipt, I don't have a way I can request an upgrade, I can't do anything with this flight.

I had called United on friday and a CSR looked at the flight and said something was going on with the system but it should be ticketed by over the weekend.

As of today still no luck.

I tried to call again today and I have been on hold for 50 minutes.

What is going on?

UA-NYC

Part of it is backlog - between this and posting flight miles, apparently the system can't keep up

Part of it is the regressive SHARES technology - it's no longer instant, and while it should be quick for UA flights, partner carriers is another matter

mcgahat

One thing that I noticed about my recenty Orbitz booking was that although it was ticketed within minutes....Orbitz has yet to hit my credit card. It has been about 4 days since I booked. Just an interesting data point I think.

clicq

Just to add a data point, I have a domestic award reservation for a flight on Friday evening (so about T-48 hours) which hasn't ticketed yet. I made the reservation last about 20 hours ago. I guess I'll just wait until tomorrow night before I panic

asnovici

Called Saturday (5 days ago) to change a partner award flight for me and my SO. Two separate reservations. Agent said it would ticket in 24-48 hours. Called Tuesday, they said its hasnt been ticketed and there are more than 2,000 tickets in the queue so i will need to wait a couple of days.

Today, both reservations dissapeared, the partner airline took the seats back because they werent ticketed. However, the miles didn't get redeposited to either account. Agent redeposited the miles, then booked the same iteneraries again (the availability was still there surprisingly), but the tickets still havent been issued. Agent (very nice lady) says they are told things get processed anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours. I told her I heard it all before and we both laughed. Nothing she can do, nothing I can do.

This is beyond ridiculous. I was silent for a while but this is just is over the top unprofessional of an airline to do, they make their own employees frustrated and alienate best customers.

Oh, talking about separate issue, the agent said that with the new procedure when one is waitlisted with a GPU and didnt clear at T-24, time of check-in matters. I told her I thought it always did, and she said it didn't before with UA but did with CO, so make sure to check in at T-24 if your upgrade instrument doesn't clear before.

Nightmare.

***Update: My reservation ticketed about 15 minutes after the booking, got the email confirmation for it, my partner's is ticketed 20 minutes after booking, they either goit their act together or we got lucky today

OtleyFlyer

7 hours on a paid ticket and still waiting - very nice agent (though not I suspect from the 1K desk) just said it was all a bit of a mess and nothing she could do... Talking of 1K desk, has anyone been able to get through to it using the AT&T inernational number? I suspect I got dumped into the generic phone queue as it never asked me my MP number.

Mabuk dan gila

Just passed the 24 hour mark with no ticket yet. On my previous unticketed reservation, CA dropped their segments from that reservation at about the 60 hour mark so I figure I still have another day or so before I loose this one. Alas I'm not hopeful. Been here before.

The fact that they can't even manage to issue tickets on many reservations 12 days after system (dis)integration would seem to indicate full blown meltdown somewhere in the system. That's really bad. This would seem like the kind of problem that will only snowball and spiral out of control. Posters here are proactive in watching and intervening to make sure their reservations work out well, but surly for every one person posting here with reservations that are not ticketing, there are probably thousands who simply picked flights, inputted credit card number, clicked OK, received confirmation of the reservation, and walked away and won't know what hit them come flight day. Those folks are going to need lots of time on the phone or in person with agents to straiten out the mess, if at all. Times thousands.

shanny71

I posted earlier in the week that I was having issues getting an award ticketed from SFO - YVR. I eventually did but only through multiple hours and phone calls. Anyway, we just got back from the trip last night and met one unfortunate guy at YVR whose reservation never ticketed, he went to the airport to check in and couldn't. The agent was trying to explain that his flight hadn't ticketed but he couldn't understand why he had a confirmed reservation and no ticket. I guess we guys are lucky in that we understand a confirmed reservation does not mean you have a ticket and we are working to make sure we don't end up like this guy. For this poor guy however he did not get to fly, at least that was the status the last we saw of him. Also, the agent was telling him there was nothing they could do for him!!