MatthewLAX

Even by the time to OP knew (i.e. the agent said 280K miles, here is the [single] PNR) it would be too late to do it separately, so there is no sense in blaming the OP.

All this stuff about Chase canceling the transfer is unnecessary. As I said earlier, the PNR can still be split. OP just must find a willing and competent agent.

jmgriffin

Already tried calling Chase. Their customer service was great, as always, but as I expected they aren't able to reverse a transfer because they don't have any control over the recipient's account. I didn't even waste my time calling UA to try to reverse.

Frequent reader, infrequent poster. Like others have stated, its not a nuance that UA's customers should be expected to pick up on.

The point I keep getting to is that I explained what I wanted, UA made a mistake and seemed incapable of fixing the mistake. Is it unreasonable to think that UA can easily make a transfer from one account to another in events of a UA error. I understand that they don't want to set a precedent for transferring miles between accounts for free when they charge for this service but the capability is there and Award ticketing department should have the tools in their hand to do something about it.

At the time of my original post I had spoken with 3 different UA reps:

-At the time of constructing the award and holding (this is the rep I allege made a mistake)

-Later that day after I had transferred Chase points to the accounts when I called to ticket. This was the first time the rep told me there was a problem. I spent a long time on the phone with him understanding the problem and trying to think of solutions to fix it

-Later that night I called once more and went through the whole spiel again. This time I was more and more persistent that they fix the problem. After escalating the issue to her supervisor I thought I was finally getting somewhere. The supervisor said that she would call every single partner that I had a flight reserved on to see if they could reissue the award space in the event a UA cancellation resulted in the award space disappearing. After 45+ mins she came back and said there was no chance in that working. She, like all of the other reps, presented me with my 2 options: Cancel the award and try to re-ticket or pay $2,100 to transfer the miles. Now increasingly frustrated, I said again "there is a 3rd option, find someone, anyone at UA to transfer the miles from one account to another for no charge. This is after all UA's fault." After assuring me there was no way to do that she either called, or pretended to call, another department and came back and said there's no way to do that.

PROBLEM SOLVED:

The 4th and final time I called was right after the my original post on this thread. I decided to try one last time before all of your suggestions came in. I called UA support like normal and just asked them to ticket, the rep came back quickly and said "this looks like a RTW ticket, I can't ticket from here, I'll have to forward you to the Star Alliance desk" (I guess it is? It just makes use of standard 2 one-ways, 1 open jaw and 1 stopover). Good news maybe? At least I'm getting to a different place now. The Star Alliance rep comes on the phone, I state my problem etc... He says, "oh, that shouldn't be a problem to split this record into 2 records. They don't like for us to do it but I can try" He came back a few mins later stating that the records had been properly split and gave me the 2nd confirmation #. He did say that the itineraries would have to go back through to the "Pricing Desk" and that I should call back in appx 24 hours to ticket. I impatiently waited about an hour and called directly to UA and the awards had already been priced out at 140k each. I then ticketed out of each account without any problem.

Thanks for all of the help!

TL;DR: If you need to split an award reservation, call Star Alliance support/RTW desk and have them do it.

flyingnosh

OP, thank you for taking the time to come back to this thread and posting the final outcome.

DH77024

is the Star Alliance desk part of UA? How is it possible that this desk can split the PNR, when the regular UA agents can't, or at least do not appear to know it is an option?

I continue to be amazed at the level of system limitations and/or agent ineptitude that are constantly reported on this board.

mherdeg

Cool. This aligns exactly with MatthewLAX's "I always call the RTW desk for my clients and they can always do this".

jglenn16

Trying to get an existing award ticket split into two PNRs. Is the Star Alliance/RTW number the number on the star alliance.com website that everyone's referring to on this thread?

1 866-900-5018

Thanks.