Well if this is a bridge to an electronic confirmable product, and if you can reuse a certificate for another LH flight assuming your upgrade didn't clear, then it's not a big deal.

Kind of awkwardly presented, however ...

The electronic certificate "aka E voucher" has been around with Lufthansa for 10 years.

Some ex-1K and ex-GS have GPUs that have had extended validity periods that have a later expiration date than the 1K/GS status expiration date.

Many are given out to travel agents or part of corporate contracts as well.

Dear UA Insider,

Thanks for the update but the question still remains, does UA/LH plan on working with those certificates that have already been issued without the routing and date? Do they expect us to send them back? Understandably fraud is a concern; but as others have noted, if the traveler's name is already matched to the certificate, I don't see how much more fraud can be perpetrated.

Scrambling to get some clean paper before Armageddon, called mp to request multiple lh gpu's. Nice agent, but they requested the flight info before they could send. Indicated that I was traveling on flex C tickets. Disappeared for 10 minutes. Came back and still requested flight data. Questioned the 1 March date, again. Finally, nice agent agreed that they could send out multiple paper gpu's without flight data before 1 March. They have been deducted from my online account. Took much longer than I would have preferred, but I hope the paper is priceless. Would rather negotiate with an lh rep with a blank gpu than a gpu with the wrong date or flight #.

I reported many pages back that I found an agent who learned the rules and agreed to courier me blank certs.

Just like last year, no certs have been received. :( But MP shows they were issued. I have to assume that they were not couriered, and most likely again were not sent to the correct address.

Last year this resulted in me having 2 expiring GPUs which nobody agreed to extend, even though other FTers have had theirs extended. Nobody from UA or MP has responded to any of my emails or letters, and calls get me nowhere. 1K voice referred me to a dead link.

Thanks, UA, for treated me as a 'valued customer'. UA Insider, please understand that this is one reason why your customers outside the US are so concerned about this change. You have still failed to acknowledge, let alone address, our concerns, so I can only assume that UA does not care about non-US based customers. That is a short-sighted viewpoint.

Terrible news. All but kills the Y to J upgrade. The J to F upgrade still lives.

But moving forward, I consider this a lost benefit.

I don't buy the traceability argument. There is a UA 016 ticket number on each cert. LH could easily record this. In addition all LH has to do is make sure its collects the cert.

True by you.

By the rest of us, I.e. those who travel to or via FRA or MUC they are essential.

Why? For me the scenario is the same. Actually, probably even less likely to get an F upgrade since if I am buying J, it's more likely a business trip with short notice.

I agree for the last minute business traveller (SMI,J's stated target market) this kills the benefit. All other things being equal, you are better off flying carriers other than LH and UA if booking last minute business fares. One would think the people who make these decisions would see the unintended consequences.

For me, as someone who rarely has last minute business class travel, I will be able to use paper upgrades, but the excess planning (returning certs when upgrades fail, and applying for new ones when I have new travel) makes my life inefficient. At the very least UA could have an online method for ordering paper GPUs.

When someone makes my life inefficient, I become open to other possibilities. For example, the new transit rules through mainland China combined with this ill advised change will make me open to considering those carriers to get to BLR.

I am sorry to read that you are still having isses getting the paper GPUs delivered. The two GPUs I requested were delivered to my address in Germany four days after being requested & issued. So the general process seems to be working.

I'm glad that at least it worked for you. My issue seems to be an old address in my UA profile, no matter what it shows to me online. Again when I ordered it I verified with the agent and again she took it all down very carefully, and again it seems that it may be going there. :(

But if had been sent by courier, it would be there already. Last time it was sent by regular post, and arrived I think 7 weeks later.

This actually is impacting my future flight decisions for March and April. I have some LH/UA mixed flight options which I will most likely book on other carriers or even another alliance if I don't have the certs, or don't have a comfort gambling with 'blank' certs.

Will be interesting to see how LH reps behave after armageddon.

Also, when I flew in October, they demanded a PNR before they would issue GPUs. This does not seem to be new. What's new is printing the itinerary on the paper and making the paper worthless for anything but the printed itinerary.

Don't they have a tracking number that they can look up to see where the certificates went to?

That's the issue; if they sent it regular mail, I don't think that they have anything. Other 1Ks outside the US obviously didn't have this issue; I didn't have it in past, but last summer it was a joke. That's why I was so careful this time to ensure that she had the correct address.

It just means that I won't be the 'test case' for using a blank cert, but I won't stand for another year of having certs expire due to UA because they sent them to the wrong address. I'm really annoyed that they never fixed the issue they themselves caused for 2012 GPUs, but I'm not about to have it happen for 2013 GPUs, especially as I requested them so early in the year.

It's also why so many of us outside the US want UA Insider to comment on the redeposit process as it is not so easy for everyone.

I have been holding on ordering before March 1 as I expect that LH will not honor the blank GPUs much after the new policy goes in effect (regardless of the language on the certificate itself). I had a terrible time in LH honoring one for a companion in Munich last October as the rep insisted that policy had changed and companion name must be on the certificate (such a procedure was not even possible then).