No, only C, D and J fares are eligible for a Business to First upgrade.

150 replies ... still no response from UA Insider. Yet another classic hit and run post :rolleyes:

what a joke
 

:td: UA latest pathetic piece to sell a major downgrade in benis as an 'enhancement'. Now you need to redeposit certificats all the time if they don't clear. Thanks UA for taking away another perk.

I am not surprised. I doubt UA Insider will admit the true reason for the change, even if he knows it.

I said as much a few days ago.

Nobody needs to admit the real reason but there are obvious questions that should be addressed. These would include how to speed up the redeposition process and what happens attempting an upgrade after March 1 with a pre-March 1 cert.

If the intent is to make the certificates harder to use, nothing will be done to speedup redeposit. If the intent was to stop resale, requiring only the name on a cert would be enough.

As nobody said that the pre-march certs become invalid, they should remain valid until the expiration date. Certainly those ordering certs now are assuming this. It would be nice to have a confirmation from UA Insider, of course.

Did they sell it as enhancement? I think they are just calling it an "update".

Don't get me wrong, this continues a pattern of attitude/behavior where United essentially guts a program or benefit instead of just being honest and stating that they are eliminating it.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your feedback so far. I certainly understand your frustrations about the flexibility of the new process (yes, still scheduled for March 1st). For that reason, I wanted to provide a little more insight behind our current status and what we have planned for the future.

Indeed, in collaboration with our partners at Lufthansa, we have been actively pursuing an electronic version of this product that will completely replace the paper certificate. Clearly, an electronic solution provides greater flexibility and ease of use. However, one of the other critical features is traceability, which the current certificate lacks.

To this end, we worked very closely with Lufthansa, and we were able to come to an agreement whereby we could offer the new paper certificates as a “bridge” until we are able to launch an electronic product. While I don’t have a set deployment date at this time, we all appreciate your patience while we work on it.

In the meantime, realizing that many of you have travel plans on short notice, I did want to highlight that we continue to offer the option of sending certificates by FedEx instead of regular mail, waiving the fee for Global Services and Premier 1K members.

Thanks again.

Aaron Goldberg
Sr. Manager – Customer Experience Planning
United Airlines

Update to Lufthansa GPU Certificate Request Process
 

Hi Aaron,

Thank you for the update, especially in the turbulence of this thread. (Happy Monday!) It is very reassuring to know this was not a step towards eliminating a very differentiated benefit of UA GPUs.

I'm very pleased an electronic system is in the works. Do you know if this will allow some level of confirmation prior to check-in? Will it to be managed via UA.com or LH.com? I do hope they take into account LH flies into many less sophisticated airports than found in the US or DE.

Aaron, you could've saved us from a lot of angst had your initial post included some of these details (instead of the classic hit & run), unless these were a consequence of FT feedback.

Perhaps something to think about for future downgrades (er, announcements).

How about making Z fares eligible? Someone buying a Business ticket well in advance enough to get the certificate timely would likely be able to get a Z fare, which isn't eligible for F.

UA Insider,

You have not clarified the doubts and questions asked by international members. I am included in that group and would like to know what will be the best way to return certificates that did not cleared.

It sounds like traceability is the business objective that drove this initiative.

Why is traceability suddenly so important?

The certificates weren't traceable before, and somehow, that seemed to be fine. So, what's driving the need to make them traceable now?

Is it a routine part of the general pattern of CO cheap-ness, relentlessly trying to find every possible opportunity to cut cost and increase control?

Or, is the sudden need driven by an increase in fraudulent use of the certificates?

Or, some other reason?

My guess here is that there has been an increase in resale and other fraud associated with GPUs, as that seems like a logical reason to drive a business change of this nature.

And, why might that be?

Perhaps it's because 1K's cannot use GPUs reliably or consistently anymore, and so, more 1K's are now have an incentive to sell their GPUs since they don't trust their ability to use them, whereas before the takeover by CO and replacement of UA systems with SHARES and subsequent upgrade process failures and severe restriction on R space, 1K's found it more valuable to consume the GPUs themselves, rather than selling them.

This is the new culture. All questions that don't have a good answer are just ignored.

I've faced this wall of silence on certain questions, such as upgrade integrity for companions, where the answer reflects poorly on the organization.

You know the answer. It's obvious.

No surprise.

And no blank GPUs arrived here. So either they
- didn't courier them as promised
- didn't send them to the correct address as promised

I suspect that once again it will be almost two months for them to appear at the incorrect address. :mad:

Thanks, UA. I really appreciate your assistance with this matter, when I am just working within the parameters you stated in your first post.

UA Insider, may I request again that you respond to the specific questions posed by members in this thread, especially those of us who are not living in the US, and are most likely more impacted by this change?

UA Insider, does this apply to GS and 1K not living in the US, and if so, why are some apparently not being sent by FedEx?

1K and GS are the only ones who get these, if I'm not mistaken, so then how is the "waiver of FedEx fees" being mentioned at all in this context?

Further, this "bridge" of having paper SWUs has been in place for *years*!

More CO "double-speak"...