emcampbe

this is SOP for UA. UA always switches to the point of sale of the country where your credit card billing is. Doesn't matter if you start out on a different version.

This is not standard for most most airlines worldwide, at least that I've seen. Not sure about AA/DL, but other international airlines, no matter where you start out, will change to the website of the country of your origin, show the fare in that local currency, but use that POS and price, no matter where your carD is billed. This avoids the price changing at the end like UAs can.

TCKFlier

I've been working on an itinerary that starts and ends in Europe, going to South America... I was working from the German UA website, where it quotes me 843 euros... then just before the credit card info it says $1080... I'm platinum... do I need to call UA to have them ticket it in Euros (today that's not working, but that's another story). Thanks for any feedback

mahasamatman

United's fares are based on the billing address of your credit card. I don't know if they can override that over the phone or not.

WineCountryUA

As mentioned, UA basis the point of sale on the credit card address and some tickets have restricted points of sale. Either use a EU based credit card or book via OTA.

joseeantonior

They cannot override that over the phone. My CC is from Peru, and a phone agent once quoted me a price with somewhere in the US as the POS. Card inputted, ticket priced, reservation created. Reservation wouldn't ticket. I had to call again, and they had to call the Fares dept. to get it re-priced with the correct POS (which, of course, added local sales tax and upped the price). Oh well.

lancelot21

I am surprised to discover that inventory and price depend on the billing address of my credit card. (If there's already thread on this, I couldn't find it.)

Specifically, I am pricing a business-class itinerary on .bomb, with either a U.S. or French billing address. For CDG-EWR on Jan 2, return on Jan 6, the price in business roundtrip is $3218 with a U.S. credit card...or €3951 with a French billing address. The French one is more than $1400 more expensive. (Note: This is not merely hypothetical. I have one card with my (temporary) French address, and another with my U.S. address. In both cases, the actual cards are American-issued.)

The important difference is the outbound CDG-EWR flight. In dollars, it's $2300 in Z. (C9 D9 Z8 ZN8 P0 PN0.)
In euros, it's €3175 in C (C8 D0 Z0 ZN0 P0 PN0), since Z is not available.

Is this normal that inventory buckets differ depending on credit card address? Should I always search using both of my credit cards and then choose the cheaper option?

(Note: By the way, if you do the math, it is clear that in either currency it is extremely cheap to fly EWR-CDG in business on January 6. The premium over coach is something like $200).

jsloan

On United.com, yes. The credit card billing address determines the point of sale that they use for inventory and pricing.

Kacee

Airline fares are based on point of sale (POS). This manifests in various ways, including UA pricing fares based on billing country. The infamous Wideroe mistake fare was obtained by people selecting Danish Kroner as their billing currency. Many latin american carriers (including CM and AV) will sell you a cheaper fare if you use their local website vs. the US site.

lancelot21

Do travel agents (or, at least, multinational corporations with travel offices in various countries) arbitrage this? With modern financial systems, it shouldn't be hard to find someone with the capability to choose the cheapest country...

emcampbe

Point-of-Sale pricing and inventory differences are pretty much the standard in the airline industry. Where UA differs form most I've seen is how they determine it. Most determine it by departure point, and you automatically get charged in the local currency (and can pay with a card with a billing address in any country). For example, go to British Airways US website, and do a search for FRA-XXX - the search will complete on the Germany website, and charge will be in Euros - you won't know if the inventory or price is different than the US point-of-sale. UA does it based on billing address. So search for FRA-XXX on the US wesbite, it will give the price based on US availability and in US dollars. If you switch the billing address to France, the price will update based on the availability there, and you will be charged in Euros and can only pay with a card with a French address. It compliates things a bit, since it can show a pricing change (but also is probably more protective to them, since it essentially allows you to get a price based on 'where you are' - so to speak. And take note - this can be either way - sometimes this can work to your advantage - other times, against it.

To the OP - there are at least a couple of other threads on this (though to be fair, FT search isn't always that helpful).

emcampbe

As another add, one way to potentially book this is to use an US-based OTA. Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, etc. will likely price based on the US POS price, and usually allows you to use a card with foreign billing addresses.

findark

Usually no - I think it's just a lack of sophistication issue. You can often use the foreign website of an OTA to get a foreign POS fare and pay with a US billing address.

It's actually a bit more nuanced than that. I believe pretty much all carriers work the same way:

• Inventory is based on sales city - you can trick this by forcing a different sales city for the same ticket; I think this is mostly about market presentation (it may just be a backend technical limitation).
• The fare table is based on origin city of the PNR. This is harder to trick, as you actually have to be originating in the correct country to get the better fare. This is also why international one-ways typically price much higher than half-round-trips; to prevent accidentally opening a carrier to cross-border price loss.
• The fare price is in the currency of the fare table (so e.g. for a PNR originating in LON, the fares are denominated* in GBP).
• You can use any sales city with any fare table; the currency of the fare table is converted at prevailing market rates to the currency of the sales city when you tender payment.

* Technically, all fares are filed in NUC (a proxy-USD currency), with a static conversion into the origin currency which is updated monthly. This generally has little practical effect, although I believe for foreign fares, it's actually 1 NUC = 1 PQD, and not 1 USD = 1 PQD.

Adam Smith

I'm looking to book a US-Canada one-way. UA is offering a P fare on their website but, when I go to pay for it with my Canadian billing address, UA changes me to the Canadian site with Z fares only, adding hundreds of dollars to the cost.

Is it worthwhile to try to call in to book this over the phone? I've read mixed results upthread of people managing to get this kind of stuff booked by phone. There are no sales restrictions in the detailed fare rules.

I have to say that this is extremely annoying. It's out of step with the way the rest of the industry, including AA and DL, works. It's also going to cost UA the business if I can't get the US PoS price by phone (I refuse to deal with OTAs given all the problems they can cause), because I'm willing to pay a premium for UA's better schedule (the price I'm shown on the US site), but not the massive premium that's required if my only option is to pay the Canadian price; I will happily fly DL's nicer planes with friendlier crews instead.

wxman22

i know this is an old thread, but wanted to clarify.
there are 3 issues here, not 2:
point of sale,
orgin of trip
country of bank issued cc

As others have said numerous times, POS and trip orgin, determine fares.
The currency you pay in is determined by your orgin of cc.
HOWEVER, in the last couple of years, vendors have figured how tto shake a few more cents out of you.
So, if your cc is Chinese, the offer to pay in USD is at the discretion of the vendor and is always more than the interbank exchange rate.
one sees this all the time now overseas. Always pushing for you to accept quote in USD.
HOWEVER, it's always best to decline and pay in your local currency.
But this is a totally different issue than how the ticket prices.
in fact, I've now read that using a vpn to change your apparent location will result in different fares for the same trip.

AND just to clarify, , everything FINDARK said above is correct.

985X

So today I am trying to book a RT from SAN to PVG. When I use the US website, it priced out to be $1004 USD. Then I changed the point of sale to China website, it turned out to be 2819 Chinese Yuan, which is around $450 USD. The itinerary is exactly the same. But when you book on US website, it costs you twice as much! Interestingly, when I called the customer service, the agent said she could not find any "G" fares. I told her to switch to China website to see the magic, and she said she had never seen this before. But I did. I played with UA system pretty well so they cannot take extra money out of my pocket. In November I booked a LAX-SIN RT, the US website showed $750 in L class. When I switched to Canada, Mexico, and China website, the price dropped to $384 in K class. Last December I booked a multi-city SNA-IAH-LHR-IAD-LAX, the system gave me L class all the way through. But when I used multi-city and entered "SNA-IAH, IAH-LHR, LHR-IAD, IAD-LAX" manually, I got K class for 300 bucks cheaper. Money saved. Now the question this: Why would UA do this to their customers? Sure I am shrewd enough to play with the pricing system, but it is justifiable to set so many restrictions to make sure passengers cannot access cheap fare buckets easily? Even in off-peak season? If I am paying $1000 for a off-peak TPAC RT in Y, I would rather fly SQ or BR, not UA.