They should have sweetened your wife's offer because she probably isn't a frequent flyer, and they want to addict her.

It's unknown whether this is malicious or just a symptom of United's IT being nless-than-stellar. Chances are your offer is based on you buying up to an auto-upgrade B-fare and hers is based on buying up to a regular -UP coach fare that books into F.

You can try temporarily removing your FF number from your profile and seeing if that changes your pricing.

EWR-DFW, 1K on W fare with GPU applied.

Dec 2, $79 offered to First.

#5 on waitlist two to three hours before flight, several FC seats available for sale, 4 seats showed opet on seatmap.

Ended up #8 on waitlist, NOT ONE E+ became available during last three hours before flight, so I'm guessing all FC seats went to kettles buying up.

My understanding is that this thread is for cheap class of service upgrade offers, not for expensive add-on offers.

This week was offered the usual $199 ORD-SFO, only difference being it was Y->F on a 744, so the offer was slightly more attractive. Underlying fare class was U.

Newbie question from AA regular
 

I bought a ticket for my son to fly from ORD to CHS on a UA regional carrier (I think GoJet). This was about 2 weeks ago. The ticket cost about $400. After buying the ticket I poked around to see if I could find a decent seat for him. He was assigned a seat in the back (this was a CRJ) but I was offered the ability to upgrade him to E+ for $65 or to F for $265. I passed on the opportunity.

Today I felt a pang of guilt and looked at the seat change options again. To my surprise, I was offered the same options but for lower prices: $45 for E+ or $65 for F! This was a no-brainer and I grabbed the F seat for $65.

My question is: Is this how upgrades work on UA? That they are sold to random non-status people at lower and lower prices as the departure date gets closer (it's still 2 weeks away)? Is this what people mean when they refer to TOD?

If so, all I can say is: I'm very happy not to be a UA elite. Crappy way to treat your elites (even though it benefited me).

Yes, that's the game.

This usually, but not always, means that if you had waited to book, you could have bought an F ticket for $465 (vs. the coach ticket for $400 at the time you bought).

Sometimes it means something a little different (because buy-up offers sometimes ignore advance purchase restrictions and just trigger based on fare class and fare availability).

UA management believes that elites are over-entitiled. If you will.

So they are showing them by selling F seats out from under them for cheap. Of course, their shabby treatment of elites has absolutely nothing to do with UA's relative under-performance on the revenue front for the past several quarters when compared to AA or DL. :p

New to all of this...

UA 1577 LAX-DEV 1/10
Silver
Checked in T-24, seat map show two available seats in first class cabin. Was #7 on upgrade list so didn't expect to clear. Offered TOD upgrade at check-in for $119. Took it because I really need to check an overweight bag anyway.

Curious thing is now seat map shows 10 open first class seats. Expert mode shows this:
F1, A1, JN1, C1, D1, Z1, ZN1, P1, PN1, R0, RN0, IN0, I0, Y9, YN9, B9, M9, E9, U9, H9, HN9, Q9, V9, W9, S9, T9, L0, K0, G0, N0, XN0, X0

Somewhat of a newbie so I'm not really understanding what's going on here.

Generally speaking, yes. This is one of the main reasons why I'm done with UA this year (after using my GPUs and RPUs as efficiently as possible). With a domestic CPU success rate around 20% in 2014 while being constantly underbid by TOD upgrades (that I'd likely pay for if offered to me), in my opinion it's evident that UA doesn't appreciate my loyalty. YMMV.

-FlyerBeek

Just to note, this is unlikely to be the case for the OP given the route and dates provided.

Thanks for all the eye-opening responses. Small wonder there are so many UA veterans defecting to AA. Well, now I know to use UA as my secondary carrier since I can apparently get dirt-cheap upgrades at the expense of elites!

I had a strange experience on 12/24. I was offered an upgrade for $89 on a PTY-IAH segment after purchasing the ticket. I accepted, but somehow it did not stick. No upgrade, no credit-card charge.

Is this common?

It's a known problem with UA's systems. The uncommon part is that your credit card was not charged.

Others have gotten the upgrade they were offered by complaining to DOT.

I believe UA doesn't market Y/B/M domestic instant upgrades as "buy ups" since there's no IRROPS protection (being an upgrade rather than a buy up). The whole thing GAs sprout about -UP fares also being upgrades rather than buy ups is 100% false. It's just a bizzare fare code -> fare class mapping.

As for these issues being a product of bad IT, a revenue-generating system would never be allowed to be that dysfunctional. It is absolutely deliberate.