A reported anomaly on Shares
 

(Moderators if this should join another thread, please move)

I was booking a SEA-ORD-MSN rt for Mrs. 420 and me, and was speaking to a CSR located in Tampa, which I presume means pmCO. At any rate I had found a fare on the UA website that was, about $472. The agent, however said the price would be $508 or thereabouts. When I expressed surprise, he asked me to wait and after a few minutes was back on the line with the $472 price. His explanation was: 'the system won't bring up that fare because there are only two left and I had requested two.--I'm glad you checked on that." He said he thought it was an oddity of mal-programming, and it may well be. But if phone enquiries produce anomalous (and disadvantageous results, problems will arise --an the customer will pay more.

Slightly off this topic, I was booking an international flight and provided the phone agent with my flight choices and her computer would not produce the same fare as quoted on the web page--by a margin of almost $2000! I asked if this was another Shares issue and the agent said, that it wasn't one arising from her inexperience, she was a veteran pmCO staff member. We finally got things synched when she asked me for the fare classes shown on the web page. Entering those to override her display produced the desired result.

These two anecdotes are just that, but it is clear that if you use the 'Premier Access' phone line, it will be useful to do some web research before hand.

Flyer 420
in Boulder

This was the case with the old UAL.bomb also.

ITA would show a particular fare, but for some reason or another it would not replicate on .bomb. Even the reservations folks could not replicate it. Only web support could replicate it. Did you try calling web support for the new COdbaUA website?

I had some problems this morning replicating a BOS-SIN trip in K class on the new website. Booking it as a multi-segment would bring up the NRT-SIN-NRT legs in W class. I ended up doing a multi-segment BOS-LAX, LAX-NRT, NRT-SIN, SIN-NRT, NRT-IAH, IAH-BOS to get the website to replicate the fare.

90% of the time you can get the new COdbaUA website to replicate the fare, but you need to fiddle with the segments as you enter them in. YMMV.

Did you select the specific schedule/fare?

I also experienced this but after some troubleshooting with an agent, we think that when you select the fare, SHARES (for w/e reason) will pull the fare (like it was purchased) temporarily for an X amount of time.

In my 6-year experience with SHAREs at CO pre-merger and 5-month experience with SHAREs at UA post-merger, a phone agent quotes a fare that is either the same or a few dollars less than what's on the web. I don't know why, but it's been my consistent experience.