How to purchase GPUable fares with Chase UR points
 

I'm planning on doing an SFO->NRT, NRT->SFO trip in September to burn a few GPUs. Does anyone have any experience buying tickets with chase ultimate points, and then applying a GPU?

It seems like te lowest available fares are GPU eligible, but Im a bit worried about the tickets being issued as bulk or group tickets.

No way to know for sure without purchasing the ticket first and seeing what your ETKT receipt looks like. You have a 24 cancellation period. The only snafu is that Chase tickets take a very long time to ticket. I've waited nearly 20 hours before.

Ask your (O)TA what ticket they're selling you before you buy it.

In the Chase travel portal, View Details will show the fare class it books into. Usually they just book these tickets as if they were cash, so normal fares.

and make sure they book you into W or higher as well

I've done this, so here is what you need to do:

1. go to United.com and find the flights you want and confirm R seats are there if you want to do the upgrade without waitlisting after ticketing. Price out the ticket, note the fare class of each segment and the fare basis

2. call Chase UR travel department - tell them you want them to book specific flights in a specific fare class. If you get a decent agent, they will do this for you, if you get a lazy one, escalate to a supervisor - you may need to hang up and call back multiple times and may need to spoon feed them each flight, booking class, and possibly the fare basis they need to ticket in each direction.

3. once the Chase ticket is issued, go back to the reservation on united.com, where it should show up if the FF number was attached , then select the Upgrade Reservation link and follow the normal process

No, you don't have a 24 hour cancelation period. Chase gives you until 9pm Mountain Time the day after you're booking (as a travel agency, they are not bound by the DOT 24 hour cancel policy). Last time I spoke to an agent, I was booking I think on a Saturday, and he told me weekends don't count and so you have until 9pm Monday, though I don't want to test that out.

Also, I've had it take a long time to ticket with Chase, and I've also seen them ticket essentially instantly. So YMMV.

You will need to call, assuming that the lowest available is not GPU eligible. Ask to book your trip "segment by segment" or similar, this will usually clue the agent in to use SABRE (which I believe is their backend) to book. They will be then keying directly into a terminal and it helps to feed in the format "date, orig-dest, flight number, booking code". Then at the end they will price the ticket and you can check it matches what you expect.

This can also be a useful time for other questions, like "is UA the validating carrier of the ticket?".

Then call UA to clear the GPU after it tickets. You can confirm it's not a bulk fare once you get the ticket, but forcing a W code makes it rather unlikely. As noted you have ~24 hours to cancel the ticket (by calling back Chase and having them void it). The will tell you that your ticket "is not upgradeable or changeable" but that's in the mandatory CYA "script" and not indicative of a bulk fare.

Follow up:

Booked thentickets through Chase's UR portal, and called 1k line to apply GPUs. About an hour after purchasing the tickets through Chase, I was confirmed in business on the new 77W.

Thanks all!

If you want to use chase points to book the lowest fare, then do so.

Call UA and then ask to upfare the ticket to W. They'll charge you the appropriate amount and a $50 'ticket fee' because they're changing the issuing of the ticket from Chase to UA.

GPU's can then be applied.

Chase Ultimate Rewards Portal and GPUs
 

Hello -

Anybody have experience booking a ticket through chase ultimate rewards, then somehow upgrading it to W fare for the purposes of applying a GPU? I don't see the option to search W fare through Chase's portal.

I'd imagine if done within 24 hours, there would be no change fee, but I'm not too sure how that would work.

I have a lot of Chase points, and would love use them for this purpose. Thanks!

Need to call

Yes, but when done with UA, you would need to use real cash to upfare.

Just call Chase and get ticketed in W. Same procedure as e.g. booking LH PE on an 016 ticket - price the itinerary yourself and read it to 'em.

You may need to HUCA or escalate to a supervisor - the front line staff are not really travel agents and don't really understand booking codes and pricing. Sometimes you get lucky and end up with someone who can help right away, but too often you are stuck with someone who insists it can't be done and feeds you a bunch of baloney.

As noted above, and based on my own experience, when you get someone on the call just state you are having problems finding a flight on the online tool and need help, then give them the details including the booking class, ie say

"November 25, from xxx to yyy, I need United flight xxx booked in W class and it should price out to $ccc" - if they balk at even looking up flights at the beginning, you know you have the wrong agent and need to HUCA.

i've done this often enough and yes, you need to call in. no surcharges for the ticket which is nice. never had an agent confused by a specific fare-bucket request. in fact, they usually know why you're doing this and that you'll be able to upgrade.

on the contrary, i've had terrible experience booking through american express for the same type of ticket: clueless agents who only believe tickets come in economy, business, and first, and that fare buckets are some made up concept that i crafted on the fly. and when you do get lucky with an agent, there's no waiving their insanely high fee.

Good to know, thanks everyone!

Having nothing but problems trying to book a W fare. All the reps just say the system doesn't allow them to request a fare code.

Did you escalate to a manager? I've never had a problem booking specific fare codes and specific flights, although it can sometimes take a few escalations or HUCA.

I think Chase subcontracts this now to Expedia. That is probably why the reps can't do this.

I, too, recently ran into this trying to purchase a W fare. The Chase agent told me they could only search on economy, premium economy, business or first and had no idea what "W" was. I wasted a bunch of time and spoke with a few reps. The last one understood what I wanted but told me their new "improved" system did not allow purchase of a specific fare basis/bucket. In fact, this system seems to be rather deficient as reps had problems finding availability on a variety of UA nonstop flights -- suggesting idiotic things like AA nonstops from EWR that I knew didn't exist and which turned :eek:ut to be from JFK. The level of understanding and expertise I experienced in my recent interactions with Chase was abysmal. They seemed to have no way to offer anything other than what the computer spit out and no understanding of why these offerings were not acceptable.

I was promised a callback about this but so far I've not received one. I need to call Chase back about this.

I have made several purchases this way and had no problem applying GPU on United website - received PQM, PQD etc

When was your last attempt? I was told that my account was "migrated to the new system" about two or three weeks ag:o.

I think the change to Expedia really screwed this up. I called 4 times and then requested a supervisor.
She was nice but still could not request a specific fare.

I last tried this about 2 months ago - I didn't know we had a new system, I better go check

Yep, the new system doesn't have the capability to do this. There are, indeed, not many special things Expedia phone agents can do other than what we can already do on the web portal.

I've found zer:eek: things that the Chase/Expedia agents can do that can't be done on the web site. In fact, they seemed to me to be generally incompetent.

FWIW, after having my request for a specific fare class denied by Chase I called Amex travel so I could use my MR points for my ticket. My request for the same fare class was handled with no problem whatsoever.

If they're not typing into SABRE or an equivalent, you will not get anywhere. If they have really moved to agents without this access, that's a huge downgrade.

Since Chase m:(ved its travel portal over to Expedia one can't request specific fare classes. Their agents only have access to the same things we can pull up via the web site. Escalation will not get you anywhere. Yes this REALLY stinks. If you absolutely have to book via Chase your only option is to do so and then call UA to move to an eligible fare class. I'd suggest trying that within 24 hours of booking so you can cancel/refund if UA won't take over the ticket and take your money. Good luck.