Wow, that is a new one to me - is it more than one example case? If so, this could be grounds for an organized action, it's fraudulent behavior.

What if I went to a car dealer, bought a new Cadillac, and at delivery time was handed the keys to a Chevrolet because the Cadillac was basically sold twice - and then the dealer told me either take the Chevy or take a hike, but either way I need to pay a re-stocking fee if I don't want the Chevrolet?

Is this a technical glitch or is UA out of its mind?

I'll try and hunt up the thread for you -- in a rush right this minute. I too found this news troubling.

The same thing can happen on a cash ticket. You do get the price difference refunded or you can ask for the next available seat in the same class of service.

I would take a cash ticket over a rewards traveller if I were running the business, too.

Really

You have an interesting view of business ethics and morals (and contract law). If you already sold a commodity and another customer offered a higher value for that same commodity,you are OK with violating the contract with the first customer and dumping them into a lesser product with a simple "too bad for you"?

Really?

+1.

The airlines use capacity controls already to allow space for paying flyers over those using award travel.

To be fair, the overwhelming majority of cases of involuntary downgrades of those purchasing confirmed (as opposed to waitlisted) award tickets tend to be issues due to last minute equipment changes or an unexpected overbooking problem. Downgraded customers are eligible for compensation in addition to getting their miles and/or dollars refunded.

For revenue tickets, they will refund the difference between price paid for F ticket and a value they arbitrarily assign to Y. There is no correlation between the value they assign to Y and the actual price of a Y ticket.

Let me break this down:

XXX-YYY

Full Y: $1,500
Full F: $2,500
Discounted F: $1,200
Normal Y: $500

Pay $1,200 to get seat in F. Get thrown into Y. Refund = $0.

This is how it's really done.

They don't look at the price a normal person would have paid for the ticket. They look at an arbitrarily assigned value for Y that is orders of magnitude higher than what any normal person would typically pay for that seat in Y.

Result:

Pax paid for F, flies in Y, and over-paid for that Y seat by a factor of 2-3x.

CO gets a 2-3x revenue premium on the Y seat and gets the extra revenue of selling the same F seat twice.

I can't believe this stuff is legal.

Since airlines seats are far from commodities, your analogy only increments your post count. A ticket does not contractually guarantee you a seat on a particular flight in a particular class of service.

Of course the customer should be compensated for the downgrade but in the case of award travel a refund the miles between the two classes of surface would be fair and reasonable.

thursday is when all us consultants schlep home from the road. my company has a contract with united, so my apologies for not being able to participate here.

Customers leaving due to UPC and other RevMan initiatives should absolutely be factored in along with the additional revenue/profit. Every CPG company takes into consideration potential delistings when taking price increases. That is in fact, Revman's job.

In the case of an equipment swap, inop seat, etc - there is an existing published protocol for downgrading an oversold F situation, and it does not include bumping mileage tickets to coach.

What was alluded to was a premeditated practice of attempting to deliberately sell the same seat twice, and if customer #2 took the bait and offered a higher margin than customer #1, then customer #1 would be bumped to the back with a "too bad for you" attitude.

Consider the rules - if I flew FLL-EWR-LAX on a F mileage ticket for 25k miles and sat in F FLL EWR, but was "bumped" EWR LAX, I am technically not due a refund because I sat in F during at least one segment in a single direction - and if I pressed the matter, maybe I would get 12,500 miles - whoopie.

I recall one instance but also cannot retrieve it now.
With the "fare difference" calculate from an imaginary Y+++ walk-up fare with a negative differential so that the customers owes UA money for being downgraded. right?
And if I had a thermonuclear weapon, I'd take all the money from everyone within the blast radius.
As bocastephen said, nice business ethics mate!
Not just that - they use overselling to pin everyone against everyone!
Both of which is of course nowhere near the airline's fault ...

And what other mechanism can you think of? That they downgrade customers for fun???
Ok there is broken seat and meal no available but these should be true rarities ...
Not what we are reading here.

If it's that common I would think some could cite a specific example I could look up.

If (a) this actually happens and (b) it's because the airline sold the seat out from under them, that is clearly an ethics violation and possibly actionable.

If this happens because of an equipment change or a flight cancellation or merged flights or something else then the airline has to move someone back. As long as they refund the differences properly then it's called "life".

That's why I'm asking for specific examples. A whole lot of rhetoric about an airline managed by a mad cyclops with blood dripping from his fangs looking for a way to cheat people and eat their children. Frankly, the over the top rhetoric makes me less likely to believe the story is completely accurate.

(By "properly" I mean that if someone pays for F and is moved back, the refund the difference between what he paid and the lowest Coach fare that he *could* have paid. Not the difference between F and Y.)

<quote>The real problem thought is that as UAL looses HVFers and Elites, if there is a sudden shock to demand (Ebola is not it, but something like SARs was) or a major spike in Oil, then they can find themselves with a sudden sharp drop in demand and the steady demand from elites will not be a strong. Certainly its Elites allowed UAL to say afloat for years.</quote>

This +1000000000

I have itineraries from the depths of the 2008-2009 financial crisis when I was flying LHR-EWR-XXX r/t for "TODS" (well, 350GBP = $500), with a Y-row to myself on the 777.

DEQM in fall 2009 IIRC?

Right now, with oil down, the economy up I can't see that UAL has any incentive to treat its customers well. Especially when it can only hurt quarterly results.

Now, when the bad times come again (and they will)....

Topic Reminder

The subject of downgrades has been the topic of many threads -- so let's stay to the topic of this thread -- boycott and/or other ways to register your dissatisfaction.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator

Downgrade threads, just some
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...ation-etc.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...a-ewr-lax.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...upgraders.html
and many more

I think looking back, people should have protested more during the merger approval process for all the airlines. The lack of competition seems to be the problem to me.