After reading a few posts and experiencing upgrade hell, I figured it out!

Aug 21 confirmed GPU LAX-EWR-IST booked in February, 2012

Found an "R spot" for me and my companion and went ahead and paid an extra 400-500 for W fare

Had a confirmed upgrade on both the outbound and inbound flight

On the day of travel, LAX-EWR leg got delayed thus I missed my connection and was rebooked in LH Y

Long story short, I've been fighting with MP to get my GPUs redeposited into my account despite the fact that the agent told me it would automatically be done

I emailed and finally called 1K desk, - agent even got the redeposit wrong and gave me back 1 RPU and 1 GPU (!!!)

this just made me give up entirely on UA - and unfortunately i'm resorting to flying their close cousin AA now...

Bottom Line = This is UA's way of getting more revenue from W fares!

I'll probably end up donating my GPU's to a friend - bah

Gee, I wonder why there was confusion...

Seriously though, I don't understand why they couldn't just create a new Expert Mode. For 90 percent of the people, fare classes are gibberish. But for the remaining 10, they are extremely important. It's not rocket science to get the useful information in the hands of the people that want it.

I spent 3 hours today trying to book a single ticket on this new web site. It is horrible beyond horrible. I've never experienced such horrific lack of usability. Honestly. Never. Where do these people come from and how are they able to get away with such crap at "the world's largest airline" - the disconnect is profound.

It was a good learning experience. What I learned is that the site is designed to provide absolute overwhelming confusion and fatigue. Trying to do what you want to do is like fighting a battle that you're bound to lose at each step. And, the UI is horribly but brilliantly designed to confuse you and drive you to do what they want you to do, which always involves spending more than necessary.

I tried every "free" fare bucket tool that has been mentioned and they were all useless and frustrating.

So, I finally put down $9.99 to renew my ExpertFlyer subscription, and I gained a comprehensive understanding of my options in < 10 minutes then went back to UA to make a smart booking, cutting through all the crap they were trying to trick and confuse me into doing. Even then, I barely made it without signing up for crap I didn't want. It was so incredibly hard to just find the purchase flow.

Answer to your question. Spend $9.99 and get EF then move on with your life. We don't need all 90 million UA customers to waste the same 3 hours that I wasted tonight.

1. I doubt the co-workers would agree that they are treated with dignity or respect.

2. Everything in those videos, from the first one, has been an absolute lie, the 180 degree opposite of reality. Hence, your recent observation is not surprising.

Logged into expertflyer today to add an alert for a flight in which I'm waiting for "R" space and got this message:

United Airlines has decided to remove award and upgrade class inventory from various channels, affecting ExpertFlyer. As such, United will be removed from the list of airlines in the Award & Upgrade search tool until further notice. In addition, all Active Flight Alerts for United award or upgrade class codes will be put into the Expired state.

What would the rationale be for the pulling their inventory from EF?? It's not like a novice would ever have a subscription to a third party site!

I also wonder why this happened so quickly (or apparently so) with such a sense of urgency and immediate implementation? If it was so urgent and important, it strikes me as odd that the announcement did not show up on any of the other UA communication services - like hub.united.com? For a business that seems to pride itself on communication, it just doesn't compute. Especially since after 3/3 I receive so many email blasts from UA touting this, that and the other 'opportunity' with them or their 'partners' - they obviously know how to e-communicate with their clientele. This change seems specifically targeted to their most frequent flyers. Maybe it IS all about not wanting people to use GPUs. Or miles for that matter. Sad to see all these cumulative (mostly negative) changes in what had the potential to really become a great airline. Merging could have brought the best of both companies together - but it would appear they chose the other option. There are obviously still some great people there on the front lines and I don't envy them this current situation one bit.

if you are looking for fare classes from one of the monthly services, the $5/month option on EF or the $30/6month option for KVS is sufficient.

Where?

From the get go it's been nothing but tales of the emperor's new clothes. I never believed any of this would amount to anything good but there was never an inkling of thought it would result in such a continual doublespeak.

More interesting to me is why it's of greater importance to UA to pull more information away from us than it is to fix the problems plaguing their operations.

I just discovered this myself when the greasemonkey script I had stopped working.

First they take away E+ at booking time, now they pull crap like this. Why do I even bother with United anymore...

That was the very point I made in my e-mail to SMI/J. I did get a response from "Customer Care", but it was just a rehash of the reasons for the change given in the original announcement. Still, I hope everyone posting here is also sending e-mails to UA!

Good point. Especially since I just went to the website to check on my Sunday trip - and guess what? The reservation was completely missing. Gone. Kaput. Logged in and out three times. Still not there. I'll give it till tomorrow morning and then if it's not there, will have to get on the phone. That SHARES is hands down the biggest piece of junk in the IT world right now.

Update: it's back in there as of this morning. Don't know where it decided to go, but it has returned. Wonky.

IMO it has been much greener on AA. About to drop $8K on a J fare to China and the F upgrades will clear right away. Similar itin on UA is $12K. No thanks.

So you know better than me about my analysis, even though I am the one who did the statistics for five years?

Yes, my method only gets 100% success rate, it definitely is not better than other methods that yield a higher percentage of success.

Easier to simply cut the cord than to put time and $ into fixing a years-old festering issue. Clear indication of their priorities.

If LF weren't at record highs, and there was a bit more competition, maybe their actions would be more customer friendly.