Roka

I paid a $500 change fee a few weeks. My departure flight for tonight was just cancelled. Any way for me to get a refund of that change fee? United told me I was only entitled to the ticket price itself. Seems somewhat unfair. Is that right?

johnden

You can try again with a different agent, but that is my experience too. The only refund you are entitled to is the fare you paid. If you have already started your itinerary and get stuck somewhere you may get a hotel voucher if the cancellation was not due to weather.

exerda

Nope. The two are separate transactions. You paid them for the change. That did not increase the value of your ticket. When they canceled, they refund the value of the ticket.

People would really abuse the system, too, if changes got refunded for cancelations. I had a ticket last year that had been changed repeatedly, with an aggregate of $1200 or so in change fees. Imagine if I then changed it ahead of a bad storm just to make sure it got canceled...

Roka

I guess that is right. You could in theory change your flight every day to the next day until that flight was cancelled, if you were willing to pay lots of change fees and take the small risk there were no cancellations over the next 365 days.

TA

Even then, you would only be due the refund on 1 change fee -- the one that finally resulted in the ticket/flight that got canceled. It would not be a reasonable justification to be asking for the entire history of changes to be refunded.

exerda

True.

However, even a refund on one fee isn't something UA is going to give. I could sort of understand it if someone made the change in anticipation of WX in advance of UA putting out a waiver, then their flight would have ended up covered by said waiver--that would be worth at least contacting UA and explaining the situation. You might get a voucher (not a refund, though) for a similar amount as the change fee in that circumstance.

TA

I was successful in requesting/receiving just such a refund on a once-changed ticket when the LH strike happened, when the entire ticket was cancelled. I would not have felt the same justification if it was a weather delay, etc.

mherdeg

I have gotten a refund for a change fee — but never had the guts to ask for a fare difference refund — when a travel waiver was issued a little bit after I made a voluntary change. (In my case the waiver would have made my change free if I had waited.)

Often1

OP - This is the sort of thing which you could send in as a webform request after the fact. You won't get a refund, but there is the possibility that as a customer service gesture, UA might grant some form of certificate against future travel. Not likely anywhere near $500.

I would be careful not to make this about "fairness" as it is perfectly fair. Simply ask for consideration. Worst you get is a no.

emcampbe

Fee is for you to be confirmed on the new flight. This happened. Obviously, a few weeks ago no one knew what was in store for this weekend. Unfortunately, it was bad luck on timing of the new flight. You can certainly call and ask, but I doubt you'll get it back.

A few years back, I was booked CVG-ORD-YYZ, and the day before, I ended up having to cancel the trip. Wife was on my same outbound to ORD to a different destination - as that flight was full, decided to come to the airport to see if I could get a VDB. Didn't happen. so I canceled with the $200 change fee.

A couple of hours later (after my original CVG-ORD flight departed), the flight to YYZ was canceled. Had it happened a couple of hours earlier, I could have done a refund for free. Didn't even occur to me to ask to have that waived. Like your situation, bad luck on your end with this, but no entitlement to a refund of the fee.