Total BS. Had screen scraping been the problem, it could have been easily solved by captchas, limiting access to that data to accounts at premier level, and closure of the accounts from which scraping occurs.

However, the more logical explanation is that people whose upgrades were not clearing were making angry calls after seeing open inventory. You can't solve this problem with captchas, but you can solve it with denying access to information - if people don't know they are being duped, they won't get upset. Right?

For what? R Space?

+1

This is the only "confusion" explanation I find remotely accurate.

And expertflyer just emailed me to use the United "check for upgrade" method. I hope they relent and make the same sort of change KVS did because otherwise they are telling me to switch tools.

However shady the reason might be, I can see how United may want to remove upgrade/award inventory from the fare class listing. I still don't see any good reason why the revenue fare classes have to be removed. Screen scraping? Not a real issue since those are being accessed through GDS by KVS, EF, Flightstats, and the like. Confusion? Only by a small few who don't really understand that valid fares are necessary in addition to fare class availability to book a certain fare, but I can't imagine many of those go as far as calling UA and bothering agents about it -- and at any rate after they have it explained once to them would never need to call again.

At the same time, it takes away the ability for customers to look for and book valid ticket, particularly complicated ones where one would want to look for availability segment by segment; and it also takes away the ability to look for additional SDC options or decide in advance if it's a likely possibility or not (same thing with standby). You would think UA would like the customer to have access to information for both of those as they want people to book tickets, and SDC/standby brings in additional revenue (with the exception of the elites who have the fee waiver).

Not to pile on, but I left in March of this year after 7 years as a 1K. I could see this "death by 1,000 cuts" crap coming a mile away and decided to reward another carrier with my bizniz instead (WN is the dominant carrier out of SMF). About 4 months later, I qualified for A-list, then A-list + and now Companion Pass on Southwest.
It's amazing to think that roughly a year and a half ago that I would have never even thought of being a top tier flier on WN...but here I am. As we speak, I'm posting this from a WN flight that my partner and I took, last minute, to have a night out and spend time with friends down in Santa Ana. Round trip, it cost us only 16,200 points...not each, but for the two of us (!), to make this trip, plus $10 in total 9/11 fees for the both of us. No hassles, no drama...just get on the plane, get where we're going, and done. None of what I just mentioned would be possible on UA.
After 8 years of flying, the rapidly dwindling "perks" at COdbaUA made flying a pain in the azz. At this point, they could give the store away, and I wouldn't come back.
No doubt, there are MANY more just like me...and those ranks are rapdily growing.

What a customer unfriendly move. I use the fare buckets to see what flights I can do a SDC on as well as which ones are more friendly to upgrades.

I don't know about y'all, but I am starting to think Jeffy doesn't really mean what he says about transparency, respect, and all that other stuff he goes on about. :cool:

Seems another change rolled out on Friday night ... now I get this when I try to search for award availability:

"! We’re sorry, but united.com was unable to complete your request. Please try later or contact united.com Support in the U.S. and Canada at 1-800-396-1751; the U.K., phone 0800 028 5003; elsewhere use the local phone number."

It seems that everything they do is forcing us to spend ever-increasing hours on the phone.

Why?

(tongue-in-cheek, somewhat): They're going to blame the "over-entitled elites" for delays and increasing costs w/r/t the call centers.

Pure crap. This "misinterpreted" excuse is as lame as any I've heard from CodbaUA yet. Why do you care if independent sites "scrape" your data and help your customers? Oh wait, you seem to hate your customers.

This is the worst of the changes and may render my GPUs useless next year.

Probably in hopes that people just give up and play the W lottery. Wouldn't put it past them.

It looks like KVS developed a fix for R space:

[KVS Availability Tool 7.0.5/Diamond - ITA: Upgrades/UA]

You sound like me! UA was great then it went downhill. WN 737's go everywhere I need to go domestic. UA's barbie jets or WN? WN wins all the time. Free internet is great and more airplanes are being fit with it.

how so?

Useless, no.

Lessened in value, yes.

The devaluation occurs in two ways: first, it will be harder to judge which flights are better chances to clear (when waitlisting); second, it will be significantly harder to determine when your waitlisted GPU hasn't cleared but should have (and this does happen fairly frequently).