GoSh4rks

benewr

cfischer

you need fresh availability when making such changes w/ partner flights, there is almost no way around it. UA needs to re-ticket this and yes, you might find an agent that does it, but it will come back unconfirmed and then you have a huge mess ... been there done that.

gcashin

Pretty sure it's because you're based in Canada, as I've had exactly the same error message any time I've tried to cancel an award ticket. I had never cancelled an award ticket until about 2 months ago, but had to make a couple cancellations over the course of a couple months due to a family illness and had to call in every time. Seems like it may be for any ticket where the billing address is outside the US?

margarita girl

Well, it's a new problem. I've been 1K for 6-7 years, and never had any issues until a few months ago. I need to cancel a ticket in the coming week, and I expect I'll have to call in again.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one.

gcashin

Yeah, Canada based 1K for 3 years, and I hadn't cancelled an award ticket until about 2 months ago, so figured it was the norm to have to call in. Hopefully they can get it back to working again, but I'm batting 100% on 3-4 bookings over the past 3 months for getting that error message and having to phone in to cancel. At least the 1K agents are friendly and quick in helping!

margarita girl

AustinPilot

I was flying on a business-class award ticket with 2 other passengers on a AAA-BBB-JFK itinerary, where AAA is a city in Europe, BBB is a European gateway, both legs operated by a Star Alliance partner. The original award was 70K miles per passenger. After arriving to BBB, I noticed that UA has opened 3 award seats in business on its own BBB-EWR flight and, after much drama (see below), switched to this flight. Since the AAA-BBB-EWR award would have been only 60K miles per passenger, I expected to receive 30K miles back ((70-60) x3) after the ticket has been re-issued, but didn't. A few days later, I called UA and, after an hour of back-and-forth between reservations and MPSC, was transferred to customer care where a really nasty supervisor ("let me explain something to you") told me that the ticket has been exchanged, but a new award has not been issued, so go pound sand. I can't think of any other way to ask for 30K miles back so I guess that's it?

Having done this exchange, I do not recommend it to anyone. First, I had to uncheck us from the BBB-JFK flight (a hassle, but doable). After our reservation on the BBB-JFK flight has been removed and United manually constructed a reservation on the BBB-EWR flight (and priced it incorrectly as 70K per passenger instead of 60K), it turned out that the ticket cannot be re-issued until the coupon for the already-flown AAA-BBB leg shows in the system as lifted. Waiting for this was stressful and created a real risk of being stranded at BBB without a valid ticket home. Eventually, it all worked out, but I don't think I'll try this ever again.

jsloan

In a vacuum, I agree with your idea that you should be able to get a 10K/passenger rebate. In practice, I'm not surprised that it didn't work out, although I'm sorry that you had a bad experience with the supervisor.

Re-ticketing at a connection point is extremely challenging, as you found. The basic problem is that you already had a coupon used for AAA-BBB on the AAA-BBB-JFK 70K award. Trying to replace that after the fact with an AAA-BBB-EWR award would have meant re-issuing the entire ticket, including the part that had already been communicated to the other airline. I'd be very surprised if the systems were set up to make that easy: "Hey, go into AustinPilot's record for the flight you already flew and replace ticket 016123456... with 016234567..., then mark the coupon as used."

It sounds like the agent was able to replace your BBB-JFK flight with a BBB-EWR flight as though you'd had a cancellation or delay on the BBB-JFK segment. In general, when that happens, no fare difference is computed. (i.e., if you'd paid cash, and AAA-BBB-EWR had been cheaper than AAA-BBB-JFK, you wouldn't have gotten a refund either).

Did you discuss the 10K mile difference with the phone agent when you called to make the change?

Kacee

Indeed. The only realistic way to make the refund work would be to fly the final segment and then request a post-travel refund as a customer service gesture (as opposed to a reticketing). Since this was a voluntary reroute, I don't really see that as warranted. Apparently the UA supervisor did not, either.

AustinPilot

Not easy at all, but they did get it done: the final ticket receipt (issued after AAA-BBB was flown) shows AAA-BBB-EWR. It had to be priced manually, and unfortunately they did it as an even exchange with the original AAA-BBB-JFK ticket instead of re-pricing it at the correct level.

I did, but the agent had to talk to someone else (with me on hold for 30 minutes) who changed the reservation and manually re-priced the ticket.

I did request it after flying the final segment. The MPSC and reservations folks were super-nice but could not help with an already-flown reservation, so they bounced me to a customer care supervisor who was aggressive from the get-go, before I even asked for anything. Her first words were "I am aksing [sic] you, what happened in BBB?"

I do believe they made a mistake in not re-pricing the ticket when they reissued it. I am sort of glad I tried it, so I know how this works (or doesn't , but I would not recommend it.

Kacee

Right, that was clear from your OP.

I've had success making that request by email to 1kvoice, but that's in the context of an involuntary reroute, where I was forced onto UA metal by a partner cancel. Conceptually, it seems to me that what you wanted to do was not really an award change, but a voluntary reroute once travel had already commenced.

escapefromphl

I have SFO-FRA-JNB-VFA booked but FRA-JNB is in Y on LH, if I space opens up on that flight are UA able to make the change to I without releasing the rest of the ticket?

AustinPilot

Update: complained to 1kvoice. Their response: "when I reviewed the reservation it shows that there wasn't a change to the mileage requirement" and "you also spoke to one of our Customer Care representatives and it was determined there wouldn't be any mileage returned," but gave me 15K miles back as a customer service gesture.

It's a fair enough resolution, but still no reasonable explanation. The price of the new award is 60K per person with or without the intra-European segment. If I had changed the award *before* flying the segment and flew the segment afterwards, I would have gotten 30K back. Why should it matter that I changed it *after* flying the segment. Anyway, it's a useful lesson for switching awards "mid-flight."

vishalg

Hello,

We are MileagePlus general members. Family of 3 -- 2 adults, 1 11 yr old (at time of travel.)
My son and I are starting our trip together. My wife will start later. We will all return together.
What is the best way to make our reservation to minimize the redeposit fee for our award miles in case our travel plans are disrupted?

Based on this:
"When requesting a change for more than one ticket, the fee applies to each ticket separately. If two people are traveling together and make a change, for example, there will be a fee for both."

Assuming that a round-trip ticket is in fact one ticket I should probably make a reservation with round-trips for my son and me. Next I should make a round-trip reservation for my wife, counting on the fact that we will be able to find seats next to each other when returning together.

This way, should I need to cancel the trip and redeposit miles, if done more than 61 days out, I would have to pay a fee of $150 ($75 * 2) for my son and me. And a fee of $75 for my wife. Total: $225.

If I were to split the reservation into 3 one-ways --a one-way for my son and me, a one-way for my wife, and a one-way return for all three of us, then when canceling, we are looking at ($75 * 2) + ($75 * 1) + ($75 * 3) = $450 of redeposit fees.

Is this correct?

Thanks!!