skimthetrees

I'd be tempted to call an agent and have them check every single day in a 3 month period. If they think this is better for them maybe they'll rethink it if it ends up costing them money? They need to save $2B.

DaviddesJ

Unfortunately, my time is worth a lot more than their call center agent's time.

jackal

There are some for whom that is not the case, especially overseas. Perhaps we can contract an offshore call center to make outbound calls to UA and do this research for us?

sbm12

This is absolutely not the only factor. And I know this because even sites which never had R inventory as part of the search have been hit with C&D.

Starman

Perhaps the silence is part of UA's threat to the vendors....

star_world

This is so far from reality that I'm not really sure it's worth a discussion. Factual question - does UA show instrument-supported upgrade inventory (in the forward cabin / both forward cabins if applicable) for all of its flights on its website when you do a search? If so, how can you possibly make the statement "The issue is that they don't want us to have the data at all."

We can argue all day long about whether pulling bulk data from a company's website using screen scraping without any form of commercial agreement is acceptable (it's not, IMO) or even whether UA would be willing to enter into such an agreement, but arguing that they don't want you to have the data in the first place is farcical.

These websites wouldn't have been able to provide this functionality if UA didn't provide the data on their website in the first place

Xyzzy

Let me continue that line of thought by pointing out that these sites would have to make the same queries that anyone else would have to. They just do so in an automated fashion. So, in the example above of finding SFO-SYD flights in a 3 month period with 'R' space, the screen-scraper would have to check fr you the same way you would over 90 days and presumably 90 queries. The number of queries required would furthermore be multiplied based on the frequency of the requests. Now, that's not terribly difficult to do, but it does place a load on the reservation system. The sites were selling that as a service and collecting cash. But they weren't paying for the underlying infrastructure needed to support the extent of their requests. When you have one or two people doing this it's not a problem and nobody notices. When you have thousands, it is a problem and people do notice.

star_world

Exactly. And then services like EF offered automated alerts, which adds a huge multiplier to the above numbers.

tryathlete

It comes down to control, UA wants it and loses some of it to EF and KVS Tool. Ego is a powerful element in all of this.

DaviddesJ

This is a great idea. Anyone who wants to start a service to hire people for $10/hour to call UA and spend hours looking up availability (or just spend hours searching the website), I will be their first customer.

The UA website has been slower than ever lately, so if this is their justification it's a pretty flimsy argument. If there's one thing I'm a world-class expert on, it's operating fast websites and keeping them up and reliable---this was my job at the most well-known website in the world. Blocking people from getting information, or making it harder to do, is not the right way to do it. If there's a demand, you find a way to meet it, and in this case there are lots of good options.

They make it too hard to do, returning only one result at a time, so people can't collect all of the data they want and need.

It's not that it's just slightly inconvenient. They put it literally beyond the realm of possibility. It would take hours just to confirm that there's no availability on any of a large range of dates. It would cost me more (in my time) to search for upgrades than to just spend thousands of dollars on first class tickets.

On reflection, they probably aren't deliberately making it impossible. They just don't care about the value to their users.

Bonehead

I wonder how much of this is due to wanting to withhold the data from the competition.

mahasamatman

Also, every automated query is one less chance for people to see the ads and for United to boost its advertising revenue.

LaserSailor

It is easy for people who travel on a known schedule, which captures the bulk of HVF. Travelling on business, the travel schedule is known to +-3 days, so a search in Expert Mode gives you the upgrade inventory at your fingertips.

For those searching for upgrade inventory just to fly up front for the experience, life is harder.

DaviddesJ

Most "HVF" aren't trying to use their global upgrades for business travel, because their employer already pays for their trips. They are trying to save thousands of dollars on vacation or personal travel, for themselves or others.

Have you tried your suggestion? It doesn't actually work. You can check "+/- 3 days" but it still doesn't show you flights or upgrade availability on those dates, just an overview of prices. You still have to search each date and then look at all of the individual flights.

eng3

Not sure how much its actually a factor, but for every unused GPU, its a potential sale.

Exactly, its ironic that KVS is a subscription service. If it was just a regular program you buy or open source, then it would be alot more difficult for UA to stop this. Other than speed, I don't think there's any way for UA to actually tell if you are using your browser or using an automated browser.