jhtraveller

All those years of loyalty. A Platinum for 25 years and Lifetime Platinum now. A huge benefit is now gone!! Award inventory changes drastically, usually for the better, the closer in you get. Not having the change benefit is a giant loss. I would only hope this is an oversight which will be reversed. I have seen the progress lately in customer service, and I cannot believe that United would have done this deliberately. All of these years, Platinum status has always meant something and at one point it was the top tier. It is something I have achieved by loyalty; taking the CO/US connection instead of a competitive nonstop; taking CO/UA instead of a cheaper competitor. And this is what you do? Come on guys.Think this one through. A small amount of revenue in exchange for lots of potential and lost good will!

c2cflyer

They did it deliberately. They just assume that their members with status are "Stuck"

They don't realize how big a change this is for some platinum level members who can now redirect up to 50% of their revenue flights to other airlines in 2017 without changing their premier benefits as they can drop down to gold status from up to 99,000 miles to just 50,000 and not lose anything tangible benefit.

nickab

Yeah this is really interesting to think about. We'll see how the system behaves when this launches.

I wonder whether feeding segments to phone agents will continue to work, or whether it will require them to origin + destination with only the results returned from the engine to work with. Enforced via some sort of insane version of married segments? Agents must still be able to input segments manually, otherwise how would one book SQ, which doesn't show up in award searches?

FreFly

Unfortunately putting a positive spin on a bad change is a standard marketing procedure. A few years ago, UA used the phrase "changes you will like". Now, it is "streamlining change/redeposit fees".

Asking UA to admit changes are bad is too much, but they could have just stated the new rules, without trying putting any spin on the changes.

jhtraveller

That's great. Give something to the less frequent flyers at the expense of the most loyal ones. I'm glad for you, but it is not a "good will" gesture for the Platinums. Very disappointed to say the least. I'm okay with the routing changes, but when you take away a major top tier benefit, such as no change/redeposit fee, its a very big deal. I had nothing but high hopes for the new United under Oscar's watch, and now, I wonder. Very upset at this! Loyalty is a two way street.

JBord

For what it's worth, pmUA was a perfectly fine airline for customers without a 75,000 mile status level. I get that it's a change now. But as a Premier Exec at the time of the merger, I wasn't real happy with the new Platinum status. Of course, since I normally flew 75k miles to reach Premier Exec (now Gold), I stopped caring after a year.

But stepping back, I don't really have a problem with removing the Platinum tier completely, as long as it were paired with some positive changes elsewhere, such as enhanced 1k benefits. Perhaps, UA is heading in that direction. The biggest difference now is higher priority in the CPU queue, for upgrades that are rare for anyone under 1K anyway.

jhtraveller

That's great. Give something to the less frequent flyers at the expense of the most loyal ones. I'm glad for you, but it is not a "good will" gesture for the Platinums. Very disappointed to say the least. I'm okay with the routing changes, but when you take away a major top tier benefit, such as no change/redeposit fee, its a very big deal. I had nothing but high hopes for the new United under Oscar's watch, and now, I wonder. Very upset at this! Loyalty is a two way street.

CruiserCLE

My question as well. If they are implementing a fee for this, then it's definitely a huge downgrade... Has anyone been able to clarify this?

JetAway

There are few useful benefits left for the Platinum level. It's certainly not worth making any extra effort to achieve. Gold is now the sweet spot for non-1Ks.

miniliq

Get ready for the next announcement:
"Base on the overwhelming response from our loyal fliers, we have decided to simplify and streamline the reward program even more. Effective October 1, fares to all destinations (excluding taxes and fuel surcharges) will all be 35k per flight leg for economy and 70k for business, plus a nominal $75 fee for booking, changes, or cancellations, regardless of status or days before travel. No need to worry about confusing rules for stopovers or open jaws. Our improved search engine will look for routings with the least number of legs to minimize your fees, even if it involves long layovers.
Please be patient when trying to book these rewards, because the demand may exceed the availability, especially on certain popular routes or at certain times of the year, when we may have to limit the seat availability in order to be fair to our revenue travelers ."

Sorry for the cynicism, but I'm really having a hard time digesting all of this.

Kacee

Wow that e-mail describing the program devaluation as a "user friendly" "enhancement" is offensive.

Send your thank you notes to DOJ.

Andy the sometimes flyer

I'm hoping some space opens up so I can book an award trip from the US to Syd with a stopover in SFO, and then use an open jaw and fly back from MEL. So with these new rules, that stopover in SFO would not be allowed, what about the open jaw? I guess then it would just be 2 "1 way" tickets booked together and I could still do the open jaw?

Kacee

Correct. Assuming you can get the connection to SYD via SFO on a single award. The worst case scenario here is a system like DLs where it's very difficult to book domestic connections as part of an international itinerary.

Siberian_Viktorya

Does UA keep a team of employees whose sole duty
is sit there all day long and try to come up with ways
to make a couple more bucks and give loyal customer
another reason to leave UA for good? one of these
days, the last straw will definitely brake the camel's
back.

"difficult" is putting it mildly. it's one of the reasons I despise DL.

raehl311

I'm also miffed by the lie that changing itineraries close in somehow denies people seats... it's a trade, one seat for another.

Cancels I get. But changes is just silly.