jsloan

The only surefire way to get the PQMs for the premium fare class is to call UA and request to up-fare an entire direction of travel using GG BUYUP. The cost should be the difference in fare between what you paid for the original itinerary and what you would pay for the same itinerary today if you booked that direction in business or first class.

Any other method, and any other price -- including anything that upgrades one flight while leaving a connecting flight in economy -- is an indication that you are likely to end up with economy PQMs.

StuckinITH

One data point. My wife booked small city-ORD-LGA with return EWR-small city all in one reservation (Q fare). When booking, price to purchase First Class was $250 more, although the only flight with First Class was ORD-LGA. Just after booking, the pop-up box offered the upgrade for ORD-LGA for $119. That segment became Z fare with double PQMs and 1.5 PQSs. As expected, no extra PQDs.

avi8tir

recently bought a Y ticket to europe. Went in to use my GPU on one of the legs and it offered me a P fare for $1000, so I paid for it.

However, I did not get any PQD credit for the additional fare paid to get to the P fare -- just the original value of the Y ticket.

FYI - PQM's posted correctly per P fare.

Is this right?

Kacee

The website likely offered you a purchased upgrade that booked into P. Those do not accrue PQD.

You can confirm this by looking at your receipt. If it says "Add/Collect" you're entitled to PQD. If it says "upgrade" (or similar) you are not.

JAaronT

Ugh, I've been repeatedly burned by this. Used to be that before check-in purchases were mostly fare differences and thus you got PQDs. Now it's all promos. Ridiculous they don't credit us for giving them money.

dshafiee

Sometimes depending on the fare, I find calling in and doing a GGBUYUP is cheaper then the buy up on the web site. And you get PQD.

JAaronT

Just did this for ATL-SFO. It was a work ticket so I called our travel agency to see if I they could do it and put it on my personal card. They called United! : D Said it was possible but I'd have to pay the travel agency service fee, or I could call United. Called United figured I'd get the "take control" fee gruff but heard none of it--maybe the travel agency doesn't actually control the ticket?

findark

The takeover fee is very ymmv ~ some agents care and some don't.

avi8tir

Well, my receipt says: 1011.00 USD for: Premium Cabin Upgrade

I guess it must add/collect to get PQD credit.

Looks like I got burned on this one... what a bunch of BS.

WineCountryUA

PCUs are not PDQ eligible

Nowadays upgrade "offers" are generally not PDQ eligible.

Since you booked into P, you will likely get additional PQMs, the surest way to get PQDs is to upfare (best done with a live agent)

JAaronT

Good to know. I've only done it once before (at a different employer with a different travel agent) and he mentioned the fee but said "oh we'll waive that since you couldn't do it online" without any prompting from me.

BeeeJay

bought exactly the upgrades needed to get to 75,006 miles by year end with double PQM for upgrades purchased from "Manage Reservations", hadn't been getting PQD for these all year, but had been always getting double PQM.

flight this week was rebooked twice due to weather, once it posted did not get the PQM double and flight showed Q code rather than usual P.

Called Mileage Plus Customer Care to get this corrected as I need the extra miles to reach 75,006.

Mileage plus agent advised supervisor stated I had been getting credit for previous flights due to a "system glitch" and they would allow me to keep all past PQM's earned BUT they were adjusting all my future tickets to remove the glitch and I would no longer get double PQM.

I stated only reason for upgrade was PQM, they transferred me to an agent who hung up on me.

Called back to 1K line, great agent refunded all my remaining upgrades for rest of year, about $2,000. Plus an extra final flight I had added ORD-FLL round trip for about 3 hours to get over 75,000 (refunded travel credit, waived fee).

Pretty happy they refunded due to the PQM situation. I won't upgrade in the future. The PQM and status situation made it worthwhile to me.

So I guess if you get screwed on one of these do NOT call mileage plus!

WineCountryUA

Until we see more evidence, I suspect this is just a standard case of phone agents making rules / claiming recent policies changes / MOLA -- The getting PQM credit has not been 100% in the past and the post-upgrade fare class has many times been PQM bonus earning and sometimes not. If it is a PQM bonus fare it has been earning the bonus. This is pretty much outside the control of the phone agents and likely they don't fully understand what is happening, so they are "creating a narrative."

jsloan

Agreed.

While I highly doubt that some vindictive phone agent would even have known how to "fix" this "glitch" (adjusting the booking code to ZN might have worked), I agree 100% that double PQMs are an unintended byproduct of the upgrade process.

OP: If you buy up to a first / business class fare, by calling and paying the difference between your economy fare and the lowest eligible premium cabin fare, you'll get the PQMs (and PQDs). If you take advantage of a TOD-type upgrade, even from the Manage Reservations screen, it's hit or miss, and your expectation should be no bonus PQMs. (Be glad it happened now, rather than on your last planned flight of the year .

BeeeJay

Couldn't agree more with that! I had been 100% for receiving the double PQM's before this incident. And that is a pretty significant pool of upgrades, probably 100/100 in 2016/2017/2018. I hadn't had any reason to question the methodology until this, although I was vaguely aware of some change when I stopped receiving the extra PQD. The PQD didn't concern me as I wias still over the requirement, with PQMs being the final piece to drag me across the finish line. I do remember when I first started buying these upgrades there was a "whats the difference" thing you could click on the miles vs purchase screen in the upgrade process that stated the purchase got the double creidt or something to that effect, but that has since been removed as they obviously changed the official policy.

The only thing different on this flight where I didn't get the PQM was I had two flight changes due to weather. I was never not in first after buying the upgrade, but I ended up credited for Q class. The entire time up until this flight was finally credited at normal PQM rather than double, my "futrure flights" was showing me at 75,006 at end of year.

Even when I went to cancel the upgrades, the new 1K agent after I was disconnected could see all my future flights showing as earning double PQMs but agreed with the Mileage Plus agent and could somehow "see" that I was going to have those corrected back down to only normal PQM. She was very apologetic and more than happy to refund all of my remaining supposedly "non-refundable" upcharges.

She did mention that I could do the fare difference buy-up and even noted that it was cheaper on some legs than my originally paid price, however given that I needed every single upgrade and some may be more expensive at this time (the flight this monday was $1,679), I preferred the $2,000 back in my pocket. I'll get upgraded for free on one of the two weekly legs more often than not anyway. The other leg rarely gets upgraded, has 15 Global Services people every week. I also find interesting that the leg with all the global service flyers normally has less available first seats as the flight approaches, a higher upgrade fee, until just before TOD, BUT A LOWER miles upgrade price. In the end every week I've been able to get that upgrade for $129 or $139, occasionally some odd lower amount.