Just spoke with UA reservations to have them search for R seats to use up my SWUs. Am shifting loyalty to AA EXP, so not needing to maintain my 19 year 1K status loyalty to UA.

Mentioned to the res agent that customers using "expert mode" no longer can see ANY buckets. She hadn't heard of that function being disengaged, agreed that it makes life harder for "our best customers", and said she'd pass along to her supervisor -- apparently they have daily briefings on the complaints of the day. So, if you happen to being making calls to UA over the next few days, a comment about this being one more straw that's breaking the camel's back, I think the message may get through. (MAY, of course ... but, better than doing nothing!) Mentioning the disengagement of "expert mode" on united.com may help ensure that the complaints come across consistently as to this topic (rather than being the usual rants they likely hear about not being able to find UPG space!)

You can still see when instrument upgrades aren't happening but should be. See my point #1. The incremental effort is de minimus.

It may well be. At the end of the day, if people aren't getting their free upgrades at an acceptable level, they'll move on to another program. I don't begrudge your desire for transparency at all, but it seems somewhat counter-productive for UA to effectively take away these benefits. They surely must realize you can have a mediocre product with a good FFP and survive, or a good product with a mediocre FFP (e.g. B6) but you can't have a mediocre FFP and product.

So I really don't think this is a conspiracy to hide the erosion of benefits. IMO it is probably more related to covering up their IT shortcomings, as well as controlling the access to their own data.

I don't pretend to know the details of the immunized joint venture between the various *A airlines, but rest assured that its members share revenues and profits on Transatlantic routes and that buying your ticket from LH instead of UA probably doesn't have quite the same punitive effect upon UA as you might like.

PR
 

We know you like this feature

In fact, we like this feature too

We dont want to mislead or confuse you

and, some of you abuse this feature

Better to manage your access

Why do you make us do this

If you behave we may give you a treat

+1
"Lying" might be too strong a word, but I agree with the rest of your sentiment.

On what are you basing this assertion? The A++ ATI agreement has the carriers sharing revenue on pretty much all the TATL flights, metal-agnostic. That's why they all have the exact same fares published all the time.

They must think we are effin stupid. Nice way to treat customers.

haha, perhaps an 'R'-shaped cookie? I'll leave those for the UA apologists .. ^

Just an Amazingly Bad Decision!
 

This is one of the worst decisions that UA has ever made.

1) It will decrease bookings.
2) It will reduce customer purchases.
3) It will increase phone calls to look for award and upgrade space.
4) It creates a lot of ill will - this is continue for years to come.

This is wrong on so many levels.

Billy

You can change the # of pax in the search to find out if there is multiple availability. Not ideal of course, it takes a little longer, but you can do it. Personally, I don't think it's that often where I would need to know exactly how much R inventory there is.
My bad, I don't use KVS. But I'm very surprised they can't access the revenue buckets that are published through the GDS, which any travel agent would have access to.
And I don't agree at all about the "clunkier" interface on EF. Multi-day searches, inventory display filtering, ability to specify a connection point., etc. are all enhancements over the native UA.com interface. And without the greasemonkey script, you'd have to click on each flight to see the inventory on UA.com.

+1 to all that has been said.

Horrible stupid decision.

How are you meant to figure out which flight you can apply an RPU or GPU to?

Incredibly annoying.

Now I have

a) No use for instruments. How am I supposed to know if a RPU or GPU will clear at booking without having to call and waste an agent's time???

b) No clue how full the flight is

c) No clue if there are upgrade shenanigans

I know other carriers don't necessarily show this data, but UA absolutely cannot continue to downgrade EVERY feature that customers use/enjoy if they expect to keep business.

As someone mentioned earlier, why not get ride of specific arrival times since UA's reliability has been in the toilet all summer?

plus 1 to what has been said. bad move

While I don't like this move at all, you can still still if there is upgradable space at the time of booking. Just do to advance options and click the box that talks about using miles for upgrades.

Not the easiest solution, but it works.

I agree. My guess is that the CS folks are tired of taking the "why hasn't my upgrade cleared" calls.

^^

Same here. Unless EF comes up with a workaround, I'm gone.