This is just another step along UACO's path to making upgrades as much of a black box / lottery / dice roll as possible, so that UACO can (1) ensure that upgrades expire rather than being used, which helps UA's short-term profits, and (2) sell more YBMs/TODs, which helps UA's short term profits.

The next step will be to eliminate the "search flights by mileage upgrade availability" feature, which is currently still on the website, as that also causes customer "confusion" and other "problems," the main problem being that users are actually able to redeem the upgrade instruments that UA advertised to them, which hurts UA's efforts to get as close as possible to a 100% breakage rate on GPUs, RPUs, and miles.

UA please start hiring more agents....
 

My rule since 3/3 was never to book a GPU upgrade ticket unless the UG cleared at booking since paying for a W fare and not getting an upgrade happened to me and it won't happen again.

Taking away my self help information means I will be calling the Premier line instead of booking on my own. The agent will be checking several route options across several possible dates for each direction. It's going to take the agent at least as much time as I do to find this routing and fare combination and the cost will be borne by either less available agents or result in hiring more people.

You won't notice this added burden until at least 2013 when I start flying UA again (holding back 1K until late December to avoid early deposit of GPU's).

Stop doing things with consequences to my visibility of earned benefits. You'll just force me to move it ALL to AA instead of the split I am exercising.

Better yet just get rid of the W fare restriction on SWUs and let's start a new trend towards changes I like.

A new model
 

UA wants to try a new model, sort of like Singapore airlines. SQ has tons of business travelers who pay for business class all the time--and they pay a premium big time. UA wants to get an income stream like SQ does and pay less attention to upgraders who just fly economy class all the time on cheap fares.

However, the SQ business class product is different from the UA business class product. If you ask most people, they would say that SQ busines class is in a different league than UA's.

If you speak to so many people, they hate United in general. However, it's their loyalty program that keeps so many people flying on United. If make that loyalty program not worth their while, people don't have a reason to fly on an airline that they are so upset about. The loyalty program of United is one of their golden eggs. I just hope they don't destroy it.

+1
I have same experiences too often.

Here we are 850+ posts later and I can see the tone changing to blaming the customers. Why are people complaining when the ability to see availability is still there? As they identify company personnel, FT should also identify company agents so that the field is clear. I am sure before we reach 1000 posts, the customers are going to be ridiculed as sissies who cannot see that it is all still available on the website and to quit complaining.

Are you defending their cavalier treatment of their customers? :confused:

As I've posted previously, I realize why they did it, and I can't say I blame them. What I do blame them for the horrible manner in which they have carried out this change.

Tell us, did the customers force United to make this information available in the first place? I doubt it. While I agree that it was odd for them to do this, once they did, it's their own fault for creating what you term "over-entitled" elites.

Am I defending them? No. I think this is a crappy move and I'm not at all happy with it. But I do understand why they did it and I think that most of the responses here are posturing more than indicative of real action.

Not true -. We need the alphabets back.

I need to know the numbers of seats available of C, D, Z in order to assess the chance of an R open later. When I see C9 D9 Z9 R0 I may buy a W and put in my GPU for waitlist upgrade. I will less like to do it when I seen C9 D2 Z0. I will not try at all when it is C0 D0 Z0.

Also you can already search for R by checking "Mileage Plus Upgrade Award". Either way you can only know whether it is available but not how many seats left. You will have to restart by changing the number of passengers incrementally to find out how many R left. I need this info to plan for my travel, to decide whether I should buy now or whether I can still wait since my travel plan is still not certain. For the same reason I also need to know in the same search whether it is W1 or W9, (or V1 vs. V9, Q1 vs Q9, etc),

Since I switched to AA after getting comped ExPlat my upgrades clear at the appropriate windows. I never have to sweat upgrades or fret about having upgrades sold out from under me as I do with Smisek's UNITED.

Heck, it's like how UA was 3 years ago. Back then I never missed an upgrade except on certain hub-to-hubs. Since then, my UG percentage had gone down to about 50% on Smisek's UNITED. @:-)@:-)

Exactly right.. All this is saying is "all bark and no bite". I'm sure their numbers show despite all the complaining on this site, not enough "elites" have taken action to move their business to other airlines. So if I were UA, I'd just keep heading in the same direction. Not much to lose and a whole bunch to gain.

FYI, for folks who want to ease the search process a wee bit (not much, but it's the best I can do right now), I've put together a script which basically skips the page asking you which segments you want to upgrade. So when you submit the advanced search form with the upgrade box checked you'll just jump straight to the search results.

It isn't much, but better than nothing. Script is available here.

You do realize that, regardless of what data you're seeing, you're still just guessing, right??

Shannon was very transparent with information during the cutover. Her list of known issues and updates on when they were resolved was very impressive and I was hoping indicative of a new United, the way it should be. Alas, that was abruptly shut down, probably because the press was using it as information to cite in their frequent "merger isn't going well..." articles. Sadly, the old business style re-emerged and it appears she was pulled back into a purely PR information dissemination role.

I think that in order to help get the message across, whenever someone needs to call United to get information that would have otherwise been provided before on the web site, to open with the phrase "Because expert mode is not available anymore on the web site, and until it returns, I need to ask you this information by phone....". Hopefully, call center agents will notice the change and start providing that information up the ranks. We need to use the language they used to explain the functionality...

...but a much more educated guess.

Thanks, sbm.

I've seen in some cases, the search at cobdaua.com shows a non-R F bucket (e.g., if Y/B/M is the cheapest fare). I'm curious if you're taking that into account in the script logic.

All my script does is submit the page on the website. It is up to you to actually read the page and see what the results are. I can do a lot of things but eventually you have to do some of the work yourself. :-: