Fare Shenanigans: Silvers Beware!
 

Hi,

I'm looking to book a one way from ORD-XXX 14 days from now. I've been looking at flights for a couple of days, and I know there is is V-UP for $30 more than the lowest available economy fare. I was looking to book, but using my partner's computer (he's a Silver until I hit MM later this year, probs). It turns out his account was logged in, and instead of the extra $30 for the V-UP, I (he) was offered a Q-UP for $130 more. For a moment, I was sort of pleased that as a 1K I was being offered a better deal than those with lower status, since most of the evidence suggests that UA's frequent fliers get worse offers than other passengers.

I did a couple of additional dummy bookings, one not using any MileagePlus account and one using my dad's Platinum number. Turns out that the random traveler, the Platinum, and the 1K were offered a confirmed seat in first class for $30 over the lowest economy fare, but the Silver gets dinged with an extra $100 charge. For what it's worth, it seems like it was possible to confirm the cheaper V-UP without signing in, and the Web site honored it when I signed in using the Silver's account when provided the opportunity.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but it seems like it might be wise to price your itineraries twice on the Web site, once signed in and once not. Or, better yet, engage your frequent flier friend network to get as many logins as possible and use dynamic pricing to your advantage!

Knowledge is power with the new United.

If you have the patience, it helps to use ITA Matrix to cross-check what .bomb is giving you against the published fares.

This has been reported before - it seems that it's more of a inconsistency of the web site vs prices targeting specific elite levels. It's still amazingly annoying experience. :td:

Is there any disadvantage at all to booking your ticket without logging in and then adding it right after booking (other than the annoyance of entering all your information again)?

Is there a reason why people keep calling it .bomb when in reality it is continental.com? I though .bomb was the designation of the old ua.com website.
I am not a big conspiracy person but I doubt united.com has as many glitches as we assume; I think all these "mistakes" that always favor UA are on purpose.

Agree that every search should start with ITA.

But .bomb is long since gone. CO.com is what we have now, for better or worse.

I just tried CO.com. I was brought to a rather "questionable" site that has nothing to do with air travel. I use a Mac and would caution PC users to not go there. It looks like a malwarehouse.

The "new" united.com should be called .sux like the old continental.com was, rather than .bomb like the old united.com was.

Back to the topic of the OP.

This all has to do with cookies, and not elite levels.

Fare Shenanigans: Silvers Beware!
 

Funny I was on the app the other day looking up flights CVG-SFO, and lowest was coming out at $4000 and change as lowest for about 5 weeks in advance. Went to search again, and they came back to the high $400s range, which is similar to what I had seen in past searches. So I would agree, like the OP, probably a glitch when searching somewhere, but doubt for a specific level.

I was using three different browsers.

Well.... d'uh.

The point is that the current united.com is pretty much identical to the old continental.com. Thus is is not accurate to refer to united.com by .bomb anymore.

Perhaps a new nickname is in order, like dirty bomb.

It may have been continental.com, but the United people definitely got their hands on the programming at some point.