Asiatraveler15

Many get excited about these "sales". Maybe a frenzy mentality kicks in.
For me from LAX to S. E Asia, I am only saving $190 based upon the current value of miles.

With all the changes, cancellations, etc. that people make, I bet UA makes a decent buck on these "sales". Especially on those with low or no status.

TennisNoob

Welll like right now it's cheaper to pay for a ticket than going on an saver Y seat to HKG because no one wants to goto HKG now.

I'm pretty sure UA knew we would be changing the tickets non-stop so they are making this super hard on us. Making there own agents waste time to manually re-price this stuff.

AwardBee

$190 at 1.9cpm means 10,000 miles in savings. That only covers one-way. Most of us need to get back too! So $380 worth of miles saved.

I think you have a good point about how some of us went into a booking frenzy over this sale. I certainly did, but mainly because the amount of Chase UR I had saved up was just barely enough to book through this sale and seats were available when I originally envisioned myself going.

To put things in perspective, this sale only closes half the gap between current and pre-devaluation prices. For the price I'm paying to go to S Asia (140K roundtrip), I could have had first class pre-deval. It's kind of sad really. There's so much F availability these days, probably because very few can afford it even on miles!

jmanirish

Spent an hour on the phone last night with an agent, and another 30 minutes this morning. So far no luck changing date and destination without a reprice to 70k. Frustrating conversations where the agents keep thinking the original ticket was a mistake, then say it was a promotion they can't carry over.

EDIT: In a surprise turn of events, I had success. Was about to give up, when I offered up the promo code to the Agent in a last ditch effort (promoCode=A14673). She was able to keep it at 57.5 and just pay the additional taxes for the new route.

AwardBee

That is an awesome tip to give the promo code. Thanks!! ^

jmanirish

I didn't start down that path originally because I think the T&C are too ambiguous and thought it might backfire (i.e have an agent latch on to one part and use his/her own interpretation of it it against me)

mg0901

Thank you for this tip. I have NOT had success so far.

I've gotten the following reasons:

1. promo is over, have to pay new miles balance (despite already paying and ticketing the trip in Feb.)

2. there was never a sale

3. im changing the regions of my ticket (would like to stop over in Korea on my way to BKK instead of japan). the agent was almost yelling to me 'THIS IS A JAPAN AWARD TICKET WE TREAT IT AS A DIFFERENT REGION'

oh, ok. thanks.

AwardBee

I rarely, rarely, side with United on any issue, but I think UA may have a point with #3. Because of the way United awards work, they price based on which destination zone is most "powerful" in terms of your origin. From the US, Japan is a more powerful zone than North Asia (Korea).

The sale was for specifically North/South/Central Asia, which doesn't cover Japan. If you book an award during a non-sale period in Business with Japan as *either* a stopover or a destination, it will price out at 150K R/T, unless you're combining it with a more powerful zone.

The sale didn't cover Japan, so if you change your stopover to Japan, it will price as a Japan award, and you'll be charged that price, even though you have a destination in SE Asia because Japan is more powerful than SE Asia.

In order to maintain sale pricing, you'll probably have to avoid regions more powerful than a sale region, such as Japan and Oceania.

I have no association with the following blog but he does an amazing job half-day down the page with an infographic showing the hierarchy of UA award zones.

http://travelisfree.com/2014/08/26/u...routing-rules/

***** EDIT: Ok, just saw that you're trying to switch from Japan to Korea. I misread as you wanting to switch the other way around. What did you pay for your award to begin with? 140K or 150K?

mg0901

70k outbound in biz, with an original stopover for two weeks in Japan

I need to change that stop over to Korea, which seems like it shouldn't be an issue. The final destination is still BKK, which was part of the "sale". Am i missing something?

Kacee

No just the normal UA hassles getting an award to price correctly. Something about the Japan stopover on South Asia award seems to cause special problems.

tromer

Have one of these booked with a UA domestic leg waitlisted IN. Space was available this morning, so I called to clear it.

What should have been a 2 minute operation turned into an hour long phone call with United demanding more miles or canceling my trip.

Any attempt at reason was futile. I read the email. I cited the promo code above. I kept getting the same thing, "No record of that promotion." When I asked how I had ticketed at the 57,500 level, the response was "We don't know."

After several rounds of back and forth and hold time, the agent left the itinerary as is, removed the domestic IN waitlist, and said that any future change would result in additional miles.

I would appreciate any advice on how I might make changes. Although I should get the domestic leg cleared, as I waitlisted even during the time of the promotion, I don't want to make a battle out of it, and wouldn't have called if I knew it would be one. I do hope to make changes to the partner routings as the travel window approaches, however. The tension on the call escalated over time, but everything was as civil as it can be on an outtrade. Nevertheless, I suspect there are notes in the file citing the statement about ANY change, even changing from coach to first on the domestic leg, will result in more miles, so perhaps I am out of luck?

cfischer

HUCA

RandomBaritone

A new development that I'd be grateful if someone could confirm. I'd been scanning the "change flights" list every few days, since our current itinerary has an overlong layover in ZRH, and I happen to know LX has an earlier flight to our final destination, ARN. Beginning yesterday, though, any attempt to change the outbound J leg -- which was priced at 57.5K miles -- results in an error screen.

I know, I know, online changes probably wouldn't have worked anyway, and best practice was to call it in. I wonder though: is this a new attempt to cut off any attempts at changes at all? Of course I can still price out a whole new award flight to see what the inventory looks like, but it appears they're really cracking down on changes to flights booked under this promotion, regardless of how we (mis-)interpreted the rules.

But back to my original point: can someone else with a 57.5K *A award booking in J check to see if the "change flights" function results in a list as it should, or an error page?

lewende

Many online change functions have been disabled recently, not to this promotion.

Kacee

Not that recent, and not necessarily an intentional disabling by UA.

Multi-destination awards are particularly prone to error out on online changes.

The net effect, of course, is to discourage any change at all. Since that phone call is going to take a minimum of 30 minutes, likely longer, and may require multiple instances of HUACA.

Begin deep breathing exercises now . . . .