perezoso

My wife and daughter are mid-itinerary on an award reservation in South America.

My wife needs emergency dental work, and I need to rebook her a later return.

On Friday, I rebook on the website for different dates.

I select flights that the website says are the same, or fewer, miles than the original tickets.

The tickets reissue on Friday. No problemo. Wife makes plans for a root canal plus.

On Monday, my wife gets an e-mail from United stating that the rebooking did not cost the amount of miles the website stated. The e-mail says that her ticket costs 25,000 additional miles and will be rescinded because the extra cost in miles resulted in her MP account balance going negative. Wow, I never knew you could book yourself into negative miles ... and why didn't the website say this?

While I consider this a bait and switch, booked at one price and then switched to another, an agent seems to think that United "caught" me trying to defraud them. All I did was rebook the tickets on the website, clicking the blue saver award icons.

The agent says they will cancel the reservation unless we pay $500 to buy more miles.

Whaat? Pay $500 on Monday for a reward ticket that was issued without incident, and for existing miles, on Friday?

To make a long story short, I had to spend all morning talking to about 6 people at United to try to work this out. Multiple callbacks after getting abandoned on hold.

Until the very end United would not squarely acknowledge that their website made a mistake and United would not step up to the plate to either allow the itinerary to proceed or to propose some reasonable alternative.

I finally found a similar itinerary at a lower mileage level, and they "kindly" waived the change fees (since she's just a regular member and we're now under two weeks). The last agent I talked to was reasonably nice about it.

But what an awful experience. Complete bait and switch on the rebooking, and an almost complete refusal by anybody reachable on the phone to acknowledge that the error was theirs, and the only reason why this messed up situation existed was because the website apparently stated the wrong number of miles for a ticket change, and allowed that change to happen, despite the miles not existing in my wife's account.

Big thumbs down to United.

cmdinnyc

Out of curiosity, did you have an email receipt that shows the amount of miles that should be charged for the change you made online? Did it match what was deducted?

perezoso

I did for one of them. Not for the other.

Never received a confirm e-mail on the problematic one, but the record could be pulled up with the locator.

When the reservation split (for reasons unknown, it split when their itineraries were still identical), it disassociated from my wife's account. I still can't get it to pull into her "my reservations" and stay there.

On my daughter's ticket, everything is normal (and reissue at same price/miles) visible on the receipt.

Award activity on Mom's account looks like this now...

3/16/2015 Saver Award YC45 (40,000)
3/16/2015 Combined Rewards YC45||ZC45 (65,000)
3/16/2015 Award Redeposit 65,000
3/13/2015 Saver Award YC45 (40,000)
11/11/2014 Award Redeposit 40,000
11/11/2014 Award Redeposit 40,000
11/11/2014 Saver Award YC45 (40,000)
11/11/2014 Saver Award YC45 (40,000)


But the main thing, you know, is just how totally unapologetic and unhelpful the people were. The attitude was like I was trying to screw them when, in fact, their website screwed up. Nobody until the 6th person I talked to could bring themselves to say, "Look at that, that is strange. I'm sorry the website permitted this to happen, it shouldn't have. Let's see what can be done." Instead, the attitude was like "You tried to pull a fast one on us." So offensive. Blame the victim.

mduell

I wonder if the DOT would regard this as a post-purchase price increase, since even though it was an award ticket they were demanding cash.

perezoso

Technically they were demanding that I buy almost $500 worth of miles, since United's attitude was that I had magically booked a reservation with miles I didn't have, in an apparent (to them) effort to trick them.

Of course, nobody at United will acknowledge that the website did not indicate the new booking would cost additional miles, the website made the booking, and then created a negative balance in my wife's account.

Here's the e-mail:

> From: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>
> Date: March 16, 2015 at 12:41:46 AM GMT-5
> To: <[email protected]>
> Subject: United Airlines - XXXXX (XXXXX)
>
> Dear Ms Perezoso,
>
>
>
> RE: XXXXX
>
>
>
> Due to the reissue of your ticket, Mileage Plus account XX121212, currently has a negative account balance. The account balance is currently -10973 miles. To remedy the negative account balance Miles can be transferred from another Mileage Plus account or you may purchase additional miles. The mileage transfer or mileage purchase can be completed online at www.united.com by going to MileagePlus then Buy, Transfer or Give Miles. If you have additional questions or would like assistance please feel free to contact us at 800-UNITED1 (800-864-8331) and we will be happy to assist you.
>
>
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
> United Airlines
>
>

jglenn16

Pretty similar story happened to me back in December.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/24008541-post838.html

United agents weren't helpful and blamed me. I submitted a DoT complaint and someone from United contact me after a couple of days after the DoT complaint was filed. DoT said they couldn't help me since it involved award tickets.

United Customer Care agent who works on DoT complaints was able to get me 60k miles back, basically the difference that was charged to me post-devaluation, but still ended up getting stuck paying out of pocket for a new flight and now stuck with 60k miles that I can't really use to book a first-class partner flight anymore since those mileage levels have since changed.

DC777Fan

OP do you have United on record (i.e. via email or if you happened to record the phone call) demanding $500 payment or was it via phone? I see the single email above, but when they specifically gave you the 500 dollar figure, was it via email or phone?

perezoso

No, but I know it is in the records comments. And that e-mail I quote above is basically tantamount - it says I have to buy more miles in order for them to honor the reservation.

The buy miles proposition was first made on the phone by MileagePlus in South Dakota, who reservations initially bounced me to.

By the time I got back to the 6th person, back at reservations, when she first pulled up the record she said to me "So, I see here that you agreed to buy 11,000 additional miles for $4xx.xx" (I don't remember the exact amount.)

I said, "heck no, I never agreed to that or authorized any charge and I would very upset if you tried to do that." She said, "well, it looks like that's in process". After a while on hold and some more back and forth, she said "oh, to clarify, the other agent was just documenting that you were informed of that option."

It does sound similar. These reservations had outbound legs on CM and a return leg on AV. Thinking back on it, I think something in the mileage calculation must have gone wrong when they split the record (for unknown reasons). And somehow, with the split record, and maybe with the partner legs, the website blows the mileage calculations when reissuing the tickets ... only to be caught by the audit department days after the tickets are issued.

Often1

The $500 is a red herring. It is simply the cost of the additional miles if that is the avenue OP wished to pursue and has nothing to do with anything else.

The question is whether OP has an e-ticket receipt for the new ticket and he does not.

Fortunately this has worked out. But, as a general proposition, the first and most important thing to look for is that e-ticket receipt as it is what triggers all of your DOT protections. While there may be other ways to "prove" the ticket cost, the receipt is the easiest way to do this.

perezoso

You know, the DOT protections are necessary and fine and all that, and this did work out, sort of. If you discount the nearly 3 hours it took for me hack through the picket of call centers and that we had to swallow a less convenient itinerary than I had ticketed.

I guess what I've tried to say, though, and you can call me naive, is that I want a company and employees that are capable of admitting error and proposing a reasonable compromise, rather than blaming the victim.

That the mistake was United's was manifest from the beginning. After all, booking tickets with miles you don't have is not a feature of the Mileage Plus program... it's a damn booking engine logic bug. When bureaucracies deny their own obvious mistakes...

MrOCTeckels

Just to be clear, this isn't just a problem with award tickets. UA's systems seem to be utterly broken for paid tickets too.

Last week I changed a FCO-FRA-IAH-SNA ticket to FCO-ZRH-LAX, paid the fare difference + change fee, and even saw the new tickets on the LX site. A few hours later UA calls to say that they made a mistake and sold a ticket on the FCO-ZRH flight from a bucket that wasn't available. Ended up having to buy a separate, expensive FCO-ZRH ticket... and still spent 30 minutes at check-in getting the ZRH-LAX ticket properly issued.

Miesque

This is exactly what I was thinking. Seems like United should have to eat this one because it was their issue.

eajusa

When I buy something, I don't expect the price to go up and be told I owe more the next day.

mduell

Odd the DOT regulation (14CFR399.88) never once mentions a ticket, just that the purchase has occurred when the full amount agreed upon has been paid. Can you link to a publication from the DOT stating that an e-ticket receipt triggers protections?

maxt775

mduell is absolutely correct. See this: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/399.88