Issues using UA Gift Certificates - [discontinued]
 

I bought a $200 UA gift certificate about 10 days ago so I could [hopefully] get the $200 back from Amex, since I have Platinum card. I purchase it, and never get a confirmation e-mail. I see a "pending" $200 charge on my Amex for four days, then it goes away, turns out UA didn't issue it? So I try again, and this one gets e-mailed, but this time, I can't use it when I try a few days later!!! So yesterday, I spend 45 min on the phone with web support, and they need to do it manually, for a $25 fee (:confused:). Finally they agree to waive the fee, and all is allegedly done. The flight was booked yesterday, through web support, for a flight tomorrow. Of course, I don't get confirmation e-mail, and the UA website says my ticket hasn't been paid for. So, after 45 min on the phone, I get transferred to the 1K desk, because apparently they are the only ones that can fix the problem. But of course, they can't fix it themselves, they need to put me on hold while some other desk fixes it.

Total time wasted on purchasing and redeeming gift certificate - almost 3 hours of aggravation.

Also, how much comp. should I be entitled to for this debacle? This was a very straightforward process - booking flight from IAH to LGA, and using gift certificate. no fancy itinerary, nothing!

$0

You can ask for more and you might get some but you are entitled to nil.

I'd be really surprised if you received anything for this sort of complaint.

I had no trouble issuing and using a $200 cert just two days ago (thank you AMEX Plat!)...sorry you had issues.

I had a gift cert that wouldn't work online... I had to spend 30 minutes on hold with web support, they finally just issued me a tcva ecert for the same amount.

I didn't ask for any additional compensation.

the 1K lady told me that this happens often, but that they track these issues and that it would be sent to some department to try and avoid this problem in the future. She had a Texas accent, so I didn't say anything untoward, towards shares.


Yes, but yours was handled properly. I wasted almost 3 hours total, to book a simple one-way from LGA to IAH! What really gets me is the fact that the first reservation wasn't booked properly, and that if I hadn't checked it yesterday, I would have lost it as it was only placed on "Hold". The 1K lady said the first lady (from India) did not do anything wrong, that it was all computer problems.

I would think UA would recognize the importance of giving comp in situations like these, otherwise a customer will think "why the hell fly with these guys, if it takes 3 hours and much frustration to book a direct one way flight?"

Oh, well, thank god you didn't offend SHARES! She might've hung up and reported you to the FB.. FA... CI.... what was the relevance of this again? None.

United Gft Certificates - worthless for most international flights?
 

Hi,
I tried to book an international roundtrip flight on United.com using their Gift Certificate. I found a good itinerary via Orbitz flight search, but United search engine could not find it for some reason, so I called and booked this itinerary over the phone. Everything looked good, until I mentioned that I wanted to use $200 Gift Certificate and then pay the rest with credit card. The lady put me on hold, talked to her colleagues and then said I could not use GC because this flight was partially operated by another airline (part United, part Lufthansa). So I had to pay the full price (>$2k) with credit card.
My question is - Did anybody have the same trouble with them? Is it possible, for instance, to make them accept their GC and get a $200 refund to credit card? Or some other good suggestions?
To me this looks wrong - they already got money for the GC, and they don't let me pay with it? Makes it worthless in most cases for international travel.
---
P.S. I read Terms & Conditions - Valid for use on flights operated by United Airlines and United Express only - this does not say anything about booking, just using "on flights".

Haha- "on flights" means exactly that, towards the purchase of a flight. United has had this same certificate policy for as long as I can remember.

Now you know

Well ... I booked a United flight on United.com. Some segments are operated by Lufthansa, their partner. IMHO, they must accept their gift certificates for this kind of purcahses.
I am asking people if they were successful paying with GC for multi-carrier flights, where United was the primary airline?

No, they don't. The gift certificates are valid only on purely-UA operated itinerary. I had no problem using them for SFO-HKG on a UA-operated, UA-marketed itinerary.

Except the T&Cs don't say that it has to be on a purely-UA operated itinerary. It says its only valid for UA flights. So presumably, the GC could be used to pay for the portion of the itinerary that was on UA.

https://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/pro...tificates.aspx

"Valid for use on flights operated by United Airlines and United Express® only."

Shrug.

Right, no mention of itinerary. Just flights.

Sometimes I've been able to split an itinerary so that a code share segment is on one part, while the other part is straight UA/UX. Then, I can use the e-cert on the pure UA/UX segment.

I've done this in North America with AC and US code shares and in Asia with NH, but never TATL . It might not price out to your advantage in this case.