BearX220

United wins.

DaviddesJ

I would think so, too. That's what I said.

snic

Really? So we should just roll over and play dead in a situation like this? Let UA get away with their utterly unacceptable lack of security so that this can keep happening to people?

No. I would be grateful to anyone who has experienced this if they make as big and public a stink about it as they can.

DaviddesJ

I'm curious what people think UA and other airlines should do about this, going forward. The ability to change and cancel reservations with the record locator and passenger name is a pretty central assumption of all reservation systems I've used. I often make use of it for friends and family. It seems a bit hard for me to imagine that UA and other airlines are going to completely revoke that assumption, any time soon. So what would you do?

A simple partial fix could be, for award travel with partner airlines only, to send an email confirmation of the cancellation but wait 24 hours before actually releasing the partner inventory? That seems within the scope of what they could implement. Is it enough?

woofly

Sent what will most likely be a fruitless email to 1K Voice with a link to this forum. I specifically asked what they are doing to prevent this from continuing and affecting more reservations including Two I have this summer. Should I hear anything beyond the standard boiler plate I will post it here.

kb1992

Actually, Air Canada requires credit card number to authenticate any PNR change.

This would prevent such CA cancellations. It's pretty simple.

zoegksf

This is most worrisome. UAInsider is very quick to pipe in about Company's lovely gluten free soups, BOB etc.. be any hint of a problem and silence.

snic

It's really not that complicated. Require online cancellations of award tickets (and, at passenger's request, other reservations) to be from a logged-in account. And add a feature allowing passengers to password-protect their reservations so that any changes made by phone require the password.

I mean, think about it. Is there any other product worth thousands of dollars that are just as cavalierly protected by the companies that offer them? If you buy a $1,000 piece of jewelry online, does the seller send it via first class mail, or via a more secure method? UA is guilty of negligence for using the equivalent of first class mail to deliver (and store) our tickets.

Yes, there are probably ways for bad guys to get around the basic protections I suggest. But it's better than leaving it as is.

kb1992

To me, this is good enough.

For award tickets, changes can only be made via logged-in account where the miles were from.

MSPeconomist

This would imply that if you gift an award ticket to someone, they cannot make any changes to it; you must deal even with changes due to a schedule change. This might annoy some people while others would approve of such a rule.

zombietooth

Unfortunately, making a big stink, which I did, including emailing/talking to 5 different escalated CS reps at UA, takes a lot of time and yielded me absolutely nothing.

I am just trying to save OP from wasting more time like me. If there was a chance that OP would prevail, I would say go ahead, but I have yet to read of anyone getting anywhere with this issue, beyond a rebooking on UA metal.

The real lesson here is that *A members should watch their Asian award bookings like a hawk, and maybe have back-up reservations. Because of this situation, I will no longer book anything on CA/BR without a back-up.

By the way, isn't there an APP that tells you immediately when any of your reservations has been changed? That certainly would be useful for this situation.

ordbkk

I called united immediately when I received the Chinese cancelation notice, and it did me no good. If you're a 1k and can redeposit awards without a penalty, having the backup reservation is a good idea, assuming you have the extra 300,000-500,000 miles needed.

mduell

I would encourage everyone hit by this to file a DOT report. Not so much for tactical assistance, but for longer term trending so the DOT can track it and take an interest in it if they see fit.

mgcsinc

^^^

I think that the function of notifying the DOT of a recurring issue is something people often forget about, but it's important.

zebranz

Are you suggesting if I need 1 seat I book 2 and if I need 2 book 4?
Then the next person looking for award travel is denied space because I took award seats which were available to others?