Considering that on the new United when you upgrade for cash and miles, wait list, fail to clear, and never get your cash or miles back, I would rather spend a GPU on a sUA old configuration 777 with a plethora of J seats. At least if you fail to clear, reports are that the GPU comes back.

is that true, that if you upgrade with miles and pay $$ and are waitlisted and it does not clear they keep the miles and money?

I agree that C on the old 777 3-class planes isn't nearly as good as the lie-flat C seats on the new configurations, but when I was 1K I actually sought out flights on the old 777s (when I had a chance) because I had a horrendous SWU success rate on any international flight using the new configuration but always cleared on the 777s.

Plenty of reports on this forum that UA keeps miles and money on failed upgrades.

Yikes! :eek:

I wonder how they justify this? Seems like a bad--if not illegal--business practice.

Lottery tickets aren't illegal, right?

You pay your money and you take your chances at enjoying the changes $mi$ek has to offer you.

UA charges when you waitlist, but they will always refund the money and miles. Occasionally it does not happen automatically, say in the case where one is say IAH-EWR-FRA and the domestic segment cleared but the TATL did not, and you have to call in.

from the website

Had a similar experience on March 6th with a TPAC from LAX-PVG. The difference is that up until check in it was still showing up as a new config 777. I only discovered the problem upon boarding.

What added insult to injury was that it was a really empty flight and E+ was wide open and I could have snagged a 2 empties on the aisle or even 3 in the middle. If I had known upon check in, I would have probably downgraded to E+ and saved me a SWU.

The old business seats are OK, but when you've been flying in the new business seats for more than a year now, it does feel like a downgrade. No plug in power for your laptop either (unless you had one of those old-school airplug ac adapters) Which kind of stinks, especially on a 13hr flight. The FA's though knew we were disappointed in the old seats and did their best to make us feel comfortable in old business and were very attentive. They had to even chase out a seat poacher who came in from E- (surprised she didn't try to play it safe in the nearly empty E+).

I would write to 1K voice about it, but I heard that's basically like sending your e-mail directly to United's new customer service garbage bin.

Had the same thing happen on my FRA-ORD flight. Could have had 2 seats in E+. Lost an SWU to old config. Would have saved it if I knew ahead of time that the plane was changed.

Not in my case. Had one clear and then downgraded at the airport due to equipment swap, emailed 1K desk 10 days ago no response. The return flight never cleared and no GPU restoration yet, fell off the waitlist over 72 hours ago.

Still waiting for the miles to post, but will be calling. Of course, since the upgrades are so loathe to clear and I have sworn off UA for international travel for the foreseeable future, not sure these are even worth the effort to recover.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)

I'm in the opposite boat. I paid 500 to upgrade to us envoy, but got rerouted on UA. Could have kept the 500 and use a SWU

They justify it under the umbrella of "integration issues." Presumably it will eventually be resolved, but it may take the pax doing a lot of legwork and calls to get what previously was done automatically to happen.

E+ has 34" pitch in the new ones vs 35-36" pitch in the old, is 3-3-3 vs 2-5-2. On the positive side, the new ones have power, AVOD and are shell construction so people don't recline into your space.

34" is a joke on this flight - I will make sure I avoid those. I was on a Southwest flight from SNA to SJC that had 34" seat pitch. I measured it, and then measured my next e+ flight (SJC to DEN) and there was 1" difference.

Be more than willing to spend this time if I could get my "buy up" to W money back when my GPU/SWU's don't clear!

Bottom line - Yes you get your $$ and Miles back if your upgrade doesn't clear!