PhillyPhlyer40

This will come off as a HUGE rant, but I am FUMING!

I had an award
EWR-AAA-BBB (stopover)
BBB-CCC-DDD (destination)
DDD-FFF-JFK

4 seats...saver business booked. EWR-AAA is booked on UA, rest booked with partners (LX, LH, OS). Europe-for July/August this year.

So I find a better EEE-FFF-JFK flight, that 1-lets us sleep in a little later in Europe, and 2-most importantly, gets us back into EWR, so no taxi/rental car/lugging kids further. EWR saves me 1-3 hours travel time, depending on traffic.

So..I call 1K line. Everything is fine, but now I must pay an additional 100K miles for the flight (25K/person). HUH???

The 1K agent tells me the reason...ALL travel-even flights with NO changes made to them- must be at the saver level when rebooking, and EWR-AAA isn't available anymore at the saver level!

Her recommendation is to take the first leg of the trip (IN JULY!!!) and then call in to see if EEE-FFF-EWR is now available!

I have made dozens...probably more than dozens of changes to award tickets and have NEVER heard such stupid talk from a 1K/GS agent!!

Funny...but I requested a supervisor and the (now b!tchy) reluctant agent came on and said "we can give you a ONE-TIME exception!!"

Exleftseat

No need to rant. The 1K agent was right, those are the rules and many of us are aware of them ( at least I am ). You are lucky you did not have to pay with extra miles. Enjoy your trip.

Bigzamboni

Future tip: Book one-way rewards.

UA-NYC

Can you explain these rules as you see them? Seems like a bad agent to me.

OP - that's the perfect time to hang up and call again. That agent is basically saying you need to cancel & re-book the whole thing just to change a single segment (or two in your case) - that's BS.

demosthenes1

That sounds like a new "rule" to me. I've made lots of changes to award tickets when some segments no longer have availability.

WineCountryUA

no stopovers on OWs.
ditto

anc-ord772

+1

PhillyPhlyer40

UA insider...care to clarify the rule on award changes?

DWFI

Um, no, they're not.

nevansm

Agent wasn't right by any stretch of the imagination. OP, as others have recommended , hang up and call back, you'll probably get a "real" 1K agent who knows what they're doing. I've done this dozens of times. Also, shoot an email to customer service explaining that it shouldn't be your job to let agents know award rules and to have to waste your time calling back to go through the same issue.

tann1001

This looks like a stop over on an open jaw award. I didn't think that was allowed... I thought you get to chose stop over OR open jaw?

PhillyPhlyer40

So-she issued my tickets under a "one-time exception"...but never had them issued!

I called back, and got a GREAT agent in Chicago-his comment was WOW!

Here were the issues-

They werent reissued properly
First agent booked me on 1235pm dep, 15 yr old son on 935
Something about "sync"

All-in, he re-did everything she was SUPPOSED to do, and it took ~3 minutes! ^

He did say-the rule is NOT that saver award needs to be available if you are NOT making changes! ^

Stopover and co-terminals. Have done JFK/EWR ~5 times previously. NOT open jaw.

UA-NYC

You can do both now - IIRC, you can actually do two open jaws

bwiflyer01

I've made plenty of changes to an award that contains an AKL-YVR segment in C on NZ and there has been zero award inventory on that flight since I booked it back in December. I've made changes to both UA flights and non-UA flights on the itinerary and while I've had agents make up their own rules and had to hang up and call again, no one ever said changing one flight requires award inventory on all of the existing flights that aren't changing.

tann1001

Actually I was referring to the DDD / EEE part at the destination.