findark

As long as the flight is ticketed and the coupon is valid, you are good to fly. United will likely catch their mistake at some point and come for the miles, but your itin is fine (i.e. no need to fix it, but don't go spend your extra miles since UA may collect them later).

UA Apologist

One of which is that United may decide to charge you the 180,000 miles that you owe?

zm1283

Pardon my ignorance if I should know the answer to this, but I'm pretty new to points still.

Booked an award flight for my wife and I to Europe for this summer with an open jaw. (I think United calls it something different now) Spent 60k MP points for each person RT for a total of 120k and leaving my MP account pretty much empty. About 3-4 weeks after booking it I went in and changed our flight coming home from Ireland so we would fly out of a different airport. I had to pay $75 each for the change fee, which was fine. Ever since I made this change, there have been 60k MP points sitting in my United account for some reason and I have no idea why they are there. My wife and I both show up on the itinerary and confirmation email that i got when I made the change. I'm hoping they haven't refunded one of our fares when I made the change. I wanted to ask here first before I called and sounded like an idiot. Thanks.

WineCountryUA

Sounds like UA has not yet pulled the miles for the changed leg (as a part of the change process, those miles would have been released from the original segment).
This is not unknown and most of the time, UA will eventually discover the issue. Do not use the miles because if they are not there when UA gets around to pulling them, then there will be a problem. For now, if you have an issued e-ticket (with a 016 ticket number), you will be fine.

joshwex90

What happens if UA pulls miles that aren't there? I frequently do not look at my statements so I'm sure I've been mischarged and things adjusted accordingly, but I don't generally look too closely (yes, I should).

So what happens if I'm mischarged but not had the miles pulled yet, but meanwhile, see I have X miles left and spend them on a different flight (or something else), and now they're gone when UA audits?

RockyMtFlyer

Has anyone seen this scenario before?

I have an upcoming trip to LHR on a 787. There was space to upgrade to Polaris on the return leg for my party of four. I am using 20,000 plus $550 copay method to upgrade.

In order to use 20,000 miles from each of the four travelers, I had to call into United so they could split the PNR into four separate ones. After the agent split the PNRs, I used the United website to purchase the Polaris upgrades, selected seats and have Polaris confirmed for all four people. This was all done one week ago.

My bank statement had six pending charges related to the upgrades - four for $550 and two for $750. I have seen United charge twice on things before and have seen the extra charges fall off, so I wasn't too worried. This time though, as the charges moved from pending to final, four charges fell off (two of the $550 and both $750), so I have only two finalized charges for $550. All of the upgrades are still intact on all four itineraries, but as of now it seems like only two were charged.

Just curious if anyone has seen this type of odd behavior and am wondering if I should worry about those upgrades sticking.

Kacee

Collectively, this board has seen all manner of weirdness when it comes to UA collecting miles and/or payments for upgrades and awards. They are using 1980s IT. I wouldn't worry about it. Sometimes you get it for free, sometimes they realize there's still a collect required. Just to be safe, take screen shots showing each passenger ticketed in business class.

B747-437B

I issued 2 award tickets on partner metal some months ago (93k each) and the correct mileage amount of 186k was originally deducted. Then there were changes in schedule and two sectors had to be reticketed, so the 186k was re-deposited and re-deducted twice. Then one of the routes was changed from SN-operated metal to a SN codeshare on non-partner metal, so United decided to rebook us into a SN-coded revenue fare bucket on that sector and re-ticket yet again - once again the 186k was re-deposited but when the ticket was re-issued this time, the 186k was not deducted and my balance remained at the higher level.

I called UA about 2 weeks after this re-ticketing to advise them that the 186k had not been deducted, but the agent I spoke with said that a delay was normal and it would be deducted in due course. That was 2 months ago and we have now flown the entire trip without issue and returned home, but the 186k for the tickets has still not been deducted.

How long should I keep the 186k miles unencumbered and at what point is it safe to assume that UA is not going to come after them? I have plenty of UR points to top up the UA account if needed should the balance drop into overdraft somewhere down the line.

lexdevil

Lots of weird/interesting events rebooking an award flight (2 tix) SFO-LHR. Initially booked in saver coach but paid 115K miles RT per person and wait listed for business saver.

Once they added first class availability to my return (old configuration), I called in to change my return to wait list to O instead of I. They should have pulled an additional 45K miles from my account but it never happened.

A few weeks ago there was availability in business on Swiss on the outbound, so I called in to change. At that time they pulled 15K miles for the switch from UA to Swiss on the outbound. They also screwed up and deleted my wait list for first for the return flight. When I called in to fix this they bumped my issue up the chain to someone competent, who restored me to the wait list and pulled the additional 45K miles that should have been pulled back when I got on the first class wait list for the return.

Today I noticed first class availability on Lufthansa (via MUC) for the outbound. I tried to make the change online, thinking this would avoid chaos, but the website kept throwing up errors. So...I called in and, once again, chaos ensued.

It took one hour with a kind woman in the Philippines to make the switch to the Lufthansa flight. She made the correct change (I could see it in my account right away), but she said no additional miles were required. I told her that 80K additional miles were required for first (because I had only paid 70K miles for each ticket on Swiss), so she put me on hold and spent ages learning that I was right. She told me that she would waive my change fee (I told you she was kind, right?), but then she told me that the taxes were over $100 per ticket. I knew that was wrong, because they were listed as $27.20 online. So...she put me on hold again. When she finally came back she told me that the taxes were $5.40 per person. I think this was wrong, but it might just have been the residual amount after what I had already paid. Regardless, it was better than $100+, and I'd been on the phone for over an hour, so I said thank you and let her charge me $10.80.

Then I looked at the reservation and found that my wait list for first on the return had disappeared, so I had to spend another 30+ minutes on the phone getting that reinstated.

And now it appears that the kind lady in the Philippines never pulled the 80K miles for the change to Lufthansa first class. I assume they'll catch this at some point, hopefully before I take the flight in two days time, or possibly when I make changes to the return.

Given all this confusion, is there anything I should be watching out for that could cause problems with my reservations? I have ample miles to pay for the change, so there is no risk of being unable to support the upgrade.

FlyerTalker70

Update on my YYZ -> SIN flight for December. Looks like SQ is really putting pressure on UA, I just saw (and accepted) an offer to upgrade into Polaris J for 30,000 miles and no-copay (see screenshot below). I'm currently on a wait list for the upgradable segments (YYZ -> ORD and ORD -> NRT) but if it clears would be a pretty solid deal!




On a side note, the miles haven't been pulled out of my account yet for the upgrade. and it awkwardly says R class requested (instead of Upgrade Requested) unlike the return flight which I requested an upgrade:




Any thoughts?

Safe Travels,

James

Kmxu

Did you request the upgrade over the weekend? If so, it may be IT error for the cheap upgrade. The "R Class requested" suggests that upgrade request was not properly executed. See this thread for details: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unit...uested-14.html
Make sure that the miles are pulled from your account. Otherwise, you may be passed over when R space becomes available.
Good luck.

FlyerTalker70

Yes, this happened like an hour ago. Miles haven't yet been pulled from account.

If I were to call UA would they be able to ensure I'm on the upgrade list while honouring the deal I got of the co-pay being waived?

-James

anc-ord772

FlyerTalker70

Called United to see what's going on. Gentleman on the phone mentioned that the upgrade didn't process properly and that it would cost 30,000 miles + $600 USD co-pay to process upgrade. When I told him of the promotional upgrade I got on online, he double checked the United site which this time showed the normal 30,000 mile + $600 USD offer. I asked him if we could speak to Web Support and was told that wasn't possible and even if we could they wouldn't honour the promotional discount offered on the United website (even though I had screenshots of them). I inquired if there was an email for web support I could email the screenshot and was told there was none.

What's my next step? Should I let this go or HUCA?

Safe Travels,

James

NoLaGent

HUACA. It is possible to speak to web support and you should've asked for his supervisor when he told you couldn't. He sounds like the classic definition of a bad agent.