lhrsfo

So UA excludes unpublished or opaque fares. The normal English interpretation of unpublished and/or opaque suggests that these are fares which are not available for viewing. However, fares which are booked through reputable OTAs (and are available from several at similar prices) and which display full flight details both on Kayak and on the OTA's website before purchase are IMHO both published and transparent.

I had this situation last night when I booked a fare for a trip where I'm very tight for time - the flights I wanted were about $500 more on ua.com than on three separate agencies on Kayak - lastminute.com, travelbag and expedia. So I booked on lastminute.com and ran into the bulk fares issues up-thread. They booked into S, and an agent did apply an RPU to one of them.

valor155

My issue was that their was no way for me to know that the vayama.com fare was a BULK fare. Thankfully, as soon as I saw "BULK" on the UA.com receipt, I knew what might be afoot, thanks to that mega-thread on BULK fares here on FT, and them not counting for PQDs.

In my case, I tried to use vayama because they included a connection option on Lufthansa for one of the legs of the trip that was a 2 hour layover versus a 13 hour layover on United. I save a whopping $74 for 3 tickets.

The 1k agent was nice, and pointed me to 1) the same webpage I had open in my browser, which is 2) the exact webpage that WineCountry annotated above.

Says nothing specific about vayama or BULK, or how to tell. It's a crap shoot until after you buy. It alludes to some "maybe this will be a non-PQD fare" type of scenarios. The only way to know is check your receipt. You cannot know before you purchase. That's the loss here (of time, patience, etc.).

No matter, I canceled it quickly. Just a bit of a hassle because they are not being 100% transparent here. Maybe they can't be . . . in that case just award PQD on ALL non-opaque fares. Simple and fair, but also unlikely.

FlyerChrisK

UA, doing something "generous" for its elites since the merger? Ha.

Flyinace2000

I booked a flight using Chase Sapphire Points and Cash via chase's website. I was booked into a W fare class for both legs. When I logged into UA.com there is no option to upgrade the flight using miles. The reciept shows the fare as BULK USD. Will this eventually give me an option to upgrade or am I out of luck?

FARE INFORMATION
Fare Breakdown
Airfare: BULK USD
U.S. Customs User Fee: 6
U.S. Immigration User Fee: 7
U.S. Federal Transportation Tax: 35
U.S. APHIS User Fee: 5
September 11th Security Fee: 3
U.K. Air Passenger Duty: 115
U.K. Passenger Service Charge: 66
International Surcharge: 458
U.S. Passenger Facility Charge: 5
Per Person Total: BULK
USD
eTicket Total: BULK
USD
Form of Payment:
CHECK
The taxes, fees, and surcharges paid total: 699 USD
Fare Rules: Additional charges may apply for changes in addition to any fare rules listed.

NONREF/0VALUAFTDPT/CHGFEE/
Cancel reservations before the scheduled departure time or TICKET HAS NO VALUE.

malgudi

No PQDs on bulk fares as well, see thread.

tods27

Interesting that it's not upgradeable. Did you try to look at the full T&C of the fare? Based on comments in the PQD thread, this is a risk with using Chase Sapphire points. They may use a Bulk ticket that has restrictions.

PTahCha

The BULK ticket is your problem, which are not upgradable. If it's within 24 hours, ask them to reissue the ticket w/o the ticket designator. Escalate to a supervisor if necessary.

Often1

BULK means that Chase buys the seats at otherwise unavailable discounts (in bulk). No PQD, no upgrades. Basically, no nothing.

As others note, if there is still time to reissue, do it. Even if the time has passed and this can be done for a fee, it may be worth it.

Flyinace2000

O well. The upgrade is usually 20k and $500 right?

And i don't care about the PQD. I fly enough for work to clear the 10k requirement. I will get PQM, right?

demkr

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 7_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/537.51.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0 Mobile/11D167 Safari/9537.53)

This is a total joke. I'm glad this never happened to me using Chase Sapphire UR points, but the fact that its random makes it even worse when theres no rhyme or reason why it'd be considered Bulk

jpc83

You'll get PQM, if you want the option to upgrade you better get calling Chase now.

redtailshark

Very interesting. I am having no problems with an AmEx MR points travel-redeemed V and W class ticket - it is upgradeable in designation on UA.COM and in practice, as I experienced from BRU. I have additional sectors on BF WL.

Perhaps that's a difference between AmEx and Chase?

Flyinace2000

Sorry, what would i be asking chase to do? Not sure why it booked into bulk anyway. The price was exactly the same on the UR website as it was on United.com

aacharya

Maybe using points + cash versus points only?

cesco.g

Another myth from the "any fare, any date, any airline" chapter of some credit card companies.