Routine checking for itinerary changes
 

Forgive me if this question has already been asked/answered. The old United website (when it was working properly) made it pretty easy to see if any details of purchased itineraries had changed - a little note would pop up in red in the appropriate place. Now that we've migrated to the new website, will that still be the case? Thanks for any input.

No, that wil not happen, however, what I would consider a benefit offsetting the "loss", is the ability to confirm schedule changes online (so long as the change is acceptable to you) no longer will you need to call in to confirm a 5 minute schedule change, or flight number change.

Will customers be notified in case of schedule changes by phone, e-mail, etc?
I agree that, most of the time, schedule changes were minor and it was a pain to have to call to approve the changes.

My bigger issue was that, more often than not, a schedule change would also result in losing my original seat assignment. Without notification or an easy visual way to spot changes when reviewing itineraries, we had to kiss our exit row/bulkhead/favorite seat goodbye...

So there's no notification whatsoever of a schedule change???

We haven't been notified of changes--frequent loss of seats
 

I check our itineraries once a week. Most changes have occurred over weekends with the most common time for changes to occur being at the first of the month. With each "sweep" we lost seat assignments, especially for award tickets or for upgrades. Indeed, award tickets were totally cancelled once. E+ seats are routinely replaced by E- seats. We are usually able to recapture the lost seat assisgnments, or something similar, if we respond to the changes early. We have never recieved any notification. One flight, booked 9 months early, underwent 8-10 changes (5 min time changes, flight number changes, equipment change, inadequate layover times, and switch from non-stop to a one stop flight and back again). We did not receive ANY notification at any time. Pre 3/3 merger a quick call was all that was needed to recapture seats. Post 3/3, we haven't been very successful.

My flight from LGA to ORD changed to an earlier flight when the March 3rd integration happened. No notice. I checked the itineraries and found it.

How did PMCO notify customers of schedule changes? With PMUA, the red notification would easily show up when checking itineraries; I also frequently received phone calls about changes.

With the integration to SHARES, one would think that schedule change notifications would follow the old PMCO process. What was it?

Schedule change notifications
 

Well, it turns out that it WILL happen, and DID happen. Logged in last night for my usual weekly (or more often) check. One of my itineraries had some red text in it, showing a schedule and equipment change. I had to actually click on a box to "accept" the change. After doing that, was able to go into itin details, check on seats, change seats to better seats, etc.

So......IF the new system does this consistently, it's actually an improvement; no need to call an agent to "clear" the record.

You have to click "View" on every booked itin to see if changes have occurred. No summary, no reliable email.

Additionally, if you are a Pageonce user, with the old united.com Pageonce would email you once a schedule change happened. Unfortunately this hook no longer seems to work on the new united.com.

I would give up the ability to confirm online if I had consistent, proactive notification of schedule changes.

Hence why I check itins daily. Terrible usability.

My wife and I will travel to HKG next week. I have been checking daily to make sure that the seat assignments remain the same.

I agree that this is a huge problem with UA and I also check all my reservations at least once a week.
During my check last weekend, I discovered that an upcoming reservation LGA-ORD-BIS RT had magically dropped the ORD-BIS-ORD legs.
Imagine my surprise when I called and learned that UA has dropped that route and didn't re-route me through DEN.

No email. No call.

I feel sorry for those less-experienced travelers who learn of these kinds of changes when they check in for their flights.

I agree. Just this morning, I logged in to Yapta. It was not able to price one of the trips I booked (checking for potential refunds). Went to the UA web site and, sure enough, there was a schedule change, a flight number change and two equipment changes! Original seats on two segments were lost...
No e-mail, no notification. Everything was fine last night. We really need to check itins daily!

I'm one of those sad travelers who logged in to seat changes the day before the flight. UA totally unsympathetic.

My "other" day job
 

Wonder how much of the nation's productivity is affected by the need to keep checking itin/seats on a regular basis ... UA contribution to the GNP (not!). And where is Easy Update when you need it/him/her? So ... today, on my regular check of upcoming reservations, saw that seat assignments had gone to "---" on one leg. Opened seat map, clicked on a seat & voilla! was upgraded. Apparently UDU is now a DIY project :D

Checked an itin this morning for a flight next weekend; I last checked it yesterday. No notification on the itinerary but I had been moved to different flights, arriving 90 mins later than expected.

Worst part? Original flights were still in the system, with the same flight numbers and the same equipment.

On the bright side, 21C was still open.

Wow. Did they give any reason why this happened?

Also curious, did the itin have the red text highlighting the change? I really do not want to go flight by flight, line by line, through all my upcoming itins everyday looking for changes....

No reason, no red text. The phone rep put me back on original flights and said she had no idea why that happened.

Well, that is disappointing.

I pull up each itinerary every day just looking for red messages (and checking to make sure seat assignments are correct). I guess I will need to start looking at flight times and other details with some regularity.

What a waste of time.

I'd recommend doing that. This is not the first time I've seen changes come in with no notification.

I found an easy solution to the problem :D

I stopped booking on United and have improved my productivity by not having to check UA website everyday.

I wish I could implement that solution this year. Unfortunately, I booked too much travel in advance of this merger nonsense.

It is a definite probability for next year though.