TOD offered at ticket purchase
 

Please move if this is already being discussed.

I purchased a ticket today SJO-EWR-FRA-CAI and after paying for it, I had a pop up window, offering me to upgrade each individual flight as I pleased, except FRA-CAI since it is LH operated.

Looking at the pop up, it even stored my credit card information and if I had given the wrong click I would have been charged for $4.440 for the first two legs of the reservation.

It seems to me that with this new approach Upgrades definitely will be harder to get! I can see someone getting a ridiculous buy up offer and going for it, just like the ones being offered during check in.

IME, the upgrades offered at this stage are not TOD, more like HOD (or in the case of the OP's example ThousandsOD).

This is by no means new - UA has been doing this for years. And it's definitely not "TOD".

So let me get this right, you think that offering $4k+ buy-up options at ticket purchase will make upgrades harder? This is simply the up-fare offer that is offered at the bottom of pretty much every booking I have on ua.com.

Now if you had seem that up-fare being offered at $444 for that itinerary then I might be concerned.

It works: the OP was offered an upgrade for 444 "tens" of dollars! ;)

This is not a TOD. If someone's willing to pay $4,400 for that upgrade, then by all means, UA should take it. I won't complain.

SJO-EWR and EWR-SJO were less than $400, EWR-FRA was what made the difference. I have gone back into my reservation and I can not buy up anymore, it was just offered while purchasing. All flights are on a W fare.

I can't tell if you mean $400 roundtrip or each way; $200 each way for the SJO-EWR upgrade isn't bad, but still hardly scandalous.

If you click on the redeem upgrade link on your reservation is it saying buy up to first isn't available?

Yes, buying up to first is not available on the reservation after I denied the buy-up option, only wait list for miles/cash/RPU/GPU.

I usually do my ticket purchases and for me this was the first time I have had this pop up. I know that saying I was offered a $4,440 is a terrible example but this has been the only ticket this has shown.

What has me thinking is what if the ticket was not to CAI, but somewhere in the US and I would have been offered a lower buy-up, like the one for SJO-EWR? I have to book soon to SJO-YHZ that will give me more clarity on this, and if this will be a standard practice form know on.

I bought a ticket a couple of days ago - ORD-DCA-ORD - the at-purchase buy-up offer was $280-300 each way.

Again, this isn't new - these happen very, very frequently.

By the way, the reason you don't see an offer in the reservation to buy-up could be because of the LH segment. I've noticed that in the past.

Ok thanks for that clarification. I still don't think that $400 SJO-EWR is a significant issue (or the $300 ORD-DCA), that's simply discount F fare levels.

I'm still struggling to see your point about upgrades becoming harder, are you suggesting that UA shouldn't be offering upfare to discount first when available?

Because the OP doesn't understand that these offers are never discounted from the upfare to F pricing. (He called them TODs!) He is engaging in pure speculation that i'll get offered $99 to F on my $298 EWR-LAX flight.

Will not happen.

I wonder what the best discounted C fare would have been had he simply booked that originally? Compare that to the fare paid + buy-up offered and I venture to guess that there's not that much difference.

I fail to see why that's even remotely an issue. Unless one wants to argue that UA shouldn't sell premium fares (where it makes 90% of its profit on long-haul).

Clearly UA believes that it can sell the seats for fare+$4,400. If it can't, it can cut the buy-up or eventually give them away to a cert / award.

I agree that the pop-up box at res confirmation is annoying and somewhat shady business practice since as OP alludes to the wrong box being clicked might result in an undesired upfare since it reads as though the upgrade is processed immediately to the same card with which the reservation was paid. Never done it so do not know how it works.

Clearly not a TOD situation, but obnoxious, yes.

Is it really one click and it's done? If so that is shady.

I would have thought it would take you to a confirmation screen before charging, no?