halls120

I fly IAD-SFO frequently, and haven't had an upgrade clear except at purchase in over a year.

FlyWorld

This is called "dynamic pricing."

They are very proud of it. It's not a bug.

Boghopper

I am not referring to the IT people, I am referring to the comments attributed to Mr. Hand and posted by TIMOS:

"I brought up TOD upgrades – and selling $99 upgrade to general members that fly United once a year. While GS and 1K that fly 100k miles a year sit in coach. He said it’s gotten fixed. He said that was the case for about 30 days – they had systems issues. But now he says they are clearing the premier list prior to offering any upgrade sales. He said it should be fixed and squared away – but if I hear of any examples please don’t hesitate to email him."

So either TIMOS got it wrong or Mr. Hand was lying. I know which one I would bet on.

mrjay

Indeed... wasn't that touted on the recent earnings call as one of the benefits/powers of SHARES?

To illustrate my love for this dynamic pricing: I have an upcoming SNA/ORD one-way, where my upgrade offer is $2,595

FlyWorld

Amazing technology, isn't it?

If they set rates manually, the old fashioned way, they'd never be able to come up with the idea of charging $2,595 for a OW UG between SNA and ORD.

This is proof that dynamic pricing is awesome.

bob_the_d

while i'm not a fan of all the issues going on as a customer, by profession i deal with data and systems integration solutions for large enterprises and from an IT perspective, i truly can appreciate the difficulty of the task they are trying to solve.

strictly from an IT perspective though. trying to get this to work with the mountains of data they have and what i'm sure are a seriously large number of legacy and disparate systems really is a herculean task, especially for a company the size of UA. i didn't follow the NW/DL merger, but SHARES' usability aside, i would have to imagine that the systems integration process during that merger was just as headache inducing.

the wishy washy messaging and so-so communication from senior management is another matter...

sogboulder

Wow. Good thing I'm only Gold, instead of Platinum. They haven't tried to charge me anywhere near that much. I shudder to think what they'll do to you if you get 1K!

cblaisd

I was once offered a COS-DEN upgrade for only $679. On a CR7. I just chuckled. Hope for UA's sake someone took it at that price!

SFO 1K

DEN-ATL buy up $159 (W Fare)
ATL-DEN buy up $949 (L Fare)
both operated on EMB170 aircraft.

I didn't bite on either one, and didn't get my CPU on either one.

channa

Mr. Hand was incorrect. Not sure if he was lying, or he wasn't aware or simply unaware of the issues. Or he was referring to one part of the issue -- e.g., at the time, there was a big problem with CPU stalling (it still stalls, but not as frequently). He may have truly believed that this was what was causing the TOD issue, and that had been resolved.


IT challenges run the gamete. If the infrastructure is scalable, is well maintained, and works well, then many challenges are simple.

When you have a weak foundation, with band-aid processes on top of band-aid processes, then changes, growth, etc., are much more difficult and have a larger end user impact. This is the situation they're facing with SHARES.

There is no reason CO shouldn't have fixed this upgrade issue years ago. But CO never thought it was worth the effort -- the customer base was lower, and with captive hubs, they thought their customers weren't going anywhere. So, close enough was good enough.

It's just like the GUI for SHARES. CO never saw it as a priority to build something robust for their gate agents, they didn't do that many rebooks anyway, and with few hubs, most rebooks were to like flights which is a simpler command, and so on.

All the technology corners that CO cut over the years came back to haunt them in the past year.



Remember also that Hand and Smisek come from CO, and one of CO's biggest faults was a superiority culture. This is a pretty big deal, and if they're admitting now it doesn't work right, that means it didn't work right over at CO either, and that CO did something worse than a competitor. That's a tough one for someone with a superiority complex to swallow, so acceptance and ownership of problems is likely a problem in that sort of environment.

Even now, they're still not admitting that some of the CO ways of doing business have driven away customers and eroded their revenue performance. They're still acting like it was a short-term hiccup, and they will recover.

It is very difficult for someone to admit there's a problem if they don't think there's a problem.

bob_the_d

trying to figure out if they're in stage 1 or stage 3 of the 5 stages of grief...

and yeah, the band aid approach to IT infrastructure is something i sadly see quite often in large enterprises and amazes me, from an IT perspective, how many huge organizations are hanging on by shoestrings and duct tape.

of course that's good for business for me...

nerdbirdsjc

Anyone give him a sympathy call recently?