When to cancel reservation for refund in Sandy?
 

Hi,

I'm a Premier Gold trying to get out of Philadelphia (to SFO). As of this moment, I have a reservation booked with award miles scheduled to depart at 4pm Monday (yeah right, I know), and another completely independent reservation (also booked with miles) out of Cleveland, Ohio at 5pm Monday. The plan is to drive to Cleveland tomorrow early morning (~8 hours), and fly out on the second one.

I have a few logistical questions though that I don't wanna wait 3 hours on hold with United to get an answer for:

1) When is the appropriate time to cancel the first reservation? From what I understand, United is giving full refunds (miles + small fees) for flights out of affected airports, right? Do I need to wait for the flight to be officially cancelled before asking for a refund, or is now the best time? (If I try to cancel now, it says I could be charged $100).

2) If I get a refund for the miles of the first reservation, I'm assuming I'm only gonna get the chunk for this return segment of the itenerary back?

3) I changed the first reservation a 2 or 3 times yesterday before settling on the current plan, paying $25 each time (Premier Gold). I'm assuming there's no chance of getting those fees back?

Thanks,
-numegil

No idea about what is happening with award reservations... But as of yesterday morning you could reschedule or cancel a paid reservation with no cost. If I were you, I would try to be on the phone to talk to a person. And hopefully from the road going east to CLE :)

A better option here might be to simply ask UA to book you onto the CLE-SFO and cancel the existing OW you're holding. In IRROPS they will do almost anything reasonable.

You won't get the prior change fees back.

Can't be correct. You'd be leaving Cleveland before you arrive.

I cancelled an award ticket today without issue. Flights were not cancelled but fell in the travel window for the rebooking policies.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Both itineraries are direct to SFO. I booked the one from CLE earlier today when it became clear that PHL was a lost cause and United's site wasn't working for changing reservations.

Ok, I'll bug them when I get to CLE tomorrow, and see what happens then. :)

-numegil