N1120A

All,

3 weeks ago, my mom and one of her best friends suffered a 12 hour mechanical out of OGG. I had already used CR-1/RPU to upgrade them and both were confirmed. I checked for confirmable R space on flights leaving earlier, as both had to be back home sooner than the 12 hour delay allowed. After spending 2 hours on the phone, they finally were able to rebook them through HNL and get their upgrades confirmed. I then noticed that a SWU/GPU and an additional CR-1/RPU had been taken out of my account, without my permission. I asked what happened and the very nice and obviously frustrated CSR kept working on it. They then said they would be redeposited within 72 hours. Well, that 3 days has now been 3 weeks and I still don't have those instruments.

I've written 1KBlackHole. What else should I do?

sbm12

The only times I've been successful in tracking such missing instruments down on a single call I had rez connect me to the MPSC and had the PNRs of the trips where the certs were used available for the agents to research. Dealing with anyone else was useless.

malgudi

It has been 48hrs since a waitlisted upgrade using RPUs did not clear ... should it take this long for the RPU to be redeposited?

revigik

The timetable is really undefined (ie. it's a hit or a miss). If you want it back call MP Service Center, otherwise it could be weeks.

love_to_travel

It's been 20 days for me, I wonder how long I should wait before I call. I dunno, it's 2012 and they can't program the computers to redeposit the RPU when it doesn't clear? Is there some poor soul locked in a basement manually going through every single reservation to see if an RPU didn't clear?

bsmnsr

You need to call the MP line.

Ericka

In my personal experience, they will not redeposit until you call.

UA-NYC

Come on, nothing happens automatically with SHARES you know...

lotemblizej

Just had 2 GPUs (not RPUs but similar problem) redeposited after I wrote 1KVoice and waited more than a month for a response. I also got a phone call from a real person at United "Corporate Office Customer Care" with a phone number to call if they were not redeposited (they had been at that point). As with a previous email to 1KVoice, I finally got a response long after I had given up hope and in this case the issue was resolved.

Pegasus23

I wait 72hrs, then call. Always have to call. Seems if some secret person puts notes in your PNR you get the upgrade instruments back immediately. If no notes, the wait continues. Also, phone agents are beginning to not promise the instant return. They are aware they may type in the proper line of code to have the return be processed, yet processing times may take 24hrs to post in the passengers account. CYA is infecting the ranks, or has returned.

pdxtraveller

Just call--it only takes a few minutes with the phone agent.

Thunderroad

Or a few hours, with lots of time on hold, in my experience. You call whatever UA # you use for reservations, then have them put you through to the Mileage Plus Service Center. I had to first wait a long time to even get an answer at the MPSC and then another long wait while the MPSC rep tried to figure things out. Could be that my better strategy would simply have been to hang up and call again later, but she did seem to be trying and in the end ultimately succeeded.

One thing to do, then, is to prepare to do other work while the phone is on speaker, and be very patient.

Regardless, in most cases you do need to call the MPSC these days to try to straighten out such problems.

abaheti

I know... I should have picked up the phone and called in. But given the crazy post-3/3 phone issues and system merger issues, I decided to just be a polite 1K member and email in my issue.

In March, I tried to sponsor an upgrade for a colleague. It didn't clear. I called 1K line and agent (PMUA in Hawaii; super stressed and apologetic about not knowing how to do a bunch of things on SHARES yet) tried to redeposit and couldn't make it work. She said that the request was entered and to just wait for it to clear in the next sweep.

After a few weeks with nothing, I emailed 1K Voice. After 3-4 weeks, I just got this response.

I'll pick up the phone, but am I wrong to be a little annoyed that they didn't just research and fix the issue? I mean, I am already aware that no redeposit happened in the last month -- that's why I wrote them.

I thought by emailing in and being patient I was doing them a favor by not jamming up the phones with a non-urgent issue while the agents and all of you were trying to get time sensitive flight details fixed.

Also curious, I was surprised that the person answering 1K Voice himself had to call the 1K desk?

So, lesson learned. Use the phones.

Thank you for your email; I appreciate your patience and apologize for
the delay in our response.

I contacted the 1K mileage Plus Service Center on your behalf and was
advised no Regional upgrade was deposited in the past month. Please
contact the 1K Mileage Plus Service Center at: (800) xxx-yyyy or through
the 1K desk and they will work with you on this matter.

Thank you for your business as a Premier 1K and we look forward to the
privilege of serving you again.

Regards,

Jxxxxxx xxxxxxx
Corporate Customer Care

FCO_SFO

I gave it the 10 days that they recommended in one of those few e-mails about how the merger was going. Then I stopped waiting, called, and had 2 GPUs and 1 RPU redeposited in seconds (ok, minutes...but it was easy). Just call.

But beyond that... this whole redepositing of upgrade instruments is one issue they really have to address. I had to change my TATL flights which had been upgraded using GPUs. I just happened to have two other GPUs in my account so as to request upgrades on the new flights. If I did not have those in the account, I fear I would have been sitting in coach. They need to fix whatever needs fixing so the CS folks can access the upgrade instruments the moment there is an itinerary change. This redepositing before you can reuse thing is just nonsense.

love_to_travel

I ended up calling. They wanted my MP number, my PIN, the flight number and the date. After 10 minutes on hold, the RPU was back in my account. I wonder if this process will ever be automated. Also, what about the people who don't keep track of the instruments they use and they forget that it didn't clear, should it really be on the customer to keep track of these things? Maybe I'll start a concierge business that babysits frequent flyer accounts.