Does a change fee equate to a reissue?
 

Hi all, got a question, hopefully someone can answer.

Last Christmas, my wife showed up at ORD to travel to DEL. UA would not let her travel (she did not have two empty pages in her passport, and so she technically did not meet the published visa requirements for India).

My son and I left on the flight, whereas we paid $300 to change my wife's flight to the next day; she obtained a new confirmation number, and new flights, and she attempted to get extra pages in her passport.

We quickly realized that the US doesn't do extra passport pages any more, so we canceled the reservation, and she instead went the next day on a different airline, on the theory that they would not check for two empty pages (she made it to India, no problem).

Now, nearly one year later, we tried to use the residual value of her canceled ticket. UA is saying that the value is gone, because the ticket was originally issued October 30th of last year. But what happened at the airport when we paid $300? Wasn't the ticket re-issued at that point, and isn't that when the clock should start from? Isn't a re-issue exactly what you are paying for? The sympathetic agent I talked to on the phone just now said, "usually, but at the airport they can do things that we can't do here" and that the $300 change fee did not restart the clock. She and her supervisor were unable to help. She documented all of this and suggested I call the 1K line in the morning, that perhaps they could help.

Thoughts? Have we just lost a heap of money assuming that the change fee reset the clock?

The relevant details are in the Contract of Carriage :

RULE 7 TICKET VALIDITY PERIOD
[...]

NOTE: Nonrefundable fares have no value after ticketed departure time. EXCEPTION: When the Passenger cancels the ticketed flight reservations prior to the ticketed departure time, the ticket will be valid for transportation for one year from the date of issuance of the original ticket and will be subject to any and all applicable change fees. Otherwise, the ticket has no value after ticketed departure time.

Caveat: I don't know United's practices quite as well as industry practices in general, but in general ...

There are two ways to change a ticket: reissue, and revalidation. If there is no change to origin, destination, or routing, then it is possible to make the change via revalidation rather than reissue. A new ticket is not issued in the case of revalidation.

Under normal circumstances, a change to the first segment would cause the entire trip to re-price, and you'd likely be out much more than the $300 change fee. It's pretty standard practice for airport agents to override that behavior in the customer's favor if the customer makes an honest mistake (e.g. the flat tire rule). It is possible for them to override that behavior while reissuing, but when it's practical to do so I imagine it's much easier for them to do it with a revalidation. I suspect that is the case here.

You didn't seem to read the rest of that section, which states:
OP was assuming an unused ticket was reissued, and that would extend validity. If the ticket was reissued, that would be the case (I have boatloads of personal experience with this), but it sounds like, for some reason or another, it was not reissued here.

You appear to have chopped off the start of the sentence you quoted, including the part that says "Except as otherwise provided in this Rule ..."

Given the "NOTE" I quoted is a part of the same rule, it clearly overrides what you quoted.

Grrrrr. So they must not have re-ticketed.

The thing is, they were not doing us any favors at the airport that day. They charged us the $300, and were not prepared to waive any re-pricing, as they whole reason all three of us didn't go the next day is that they didn't have availability for three without a significant increase in price. So simply because they chose not to re-ticket, we're out the cash. Frustrating (though granted, I should have investigated earlier).

One more question. I remember that on my CC statement, associated with the $300 charge there was an 016 number that didn't match my wife's old ticket number. I had always assumed that was a new ticket number. I guess not? Anyone know why a 016 number would show up that was NOT a new ticket number?

The different 016 number could be any miscellaneous charge, perhaps for the $300.

Although in the past for OP, had the extra pages matter have become an issue, the wife could have obtained a second passport or a renewal passport from the Chicago Passport Agency. All of the forms are available online and can be filled out online, printed and brought with.

While one theoretically needs an appointment, just show up early (before opening time) and in a few hours either the second passport or renewal can be processed.

https://travel.state.gov/content/pas...s/Chicago.html

UA will assign an 016 number to basically any charge. eg, if you've ever paid to check a bag, check the receipt and it'll have a 016 number that looks exactly like a ticket number, and that same number will generally show up on your credit card statement.

Except it doesn't, in practice or in the words. The "EXCEPTION" modifies only the "no value after ticketed departure time" part. The intent is to say that as long as you cancel the reservation prior to departure, it is not necessary to change the ticket at the same time. This is in contrast to, for example, many British Airways fares where you must also change the ticket before the scheduled departure of any flight on the ticket or else the ticket loses all value. It may not be the most elegant way of saying it, but it works.

Even if you want to argue that the words mean something different, in my experience (as a travel agent selling many many many United tickets each year), a full reissue on a United ticket always resets the clock on the ticket validity period. Mind you, that won't override any max stay provisions, etc. for a ticket already in progress. It's not uncommon for people to exchange to a new ticket with no change fee far in the future to extend the validity of an existing ticket or ETC. (Hopefully it doesn't become common enough for United to crack down on the relatively generous policy though.)

We thought of that, but then the problem is that the new passport number would not have matched the e-visa she had.

While an airline checking for two blank passport pages is (perhaps?) relatively low probability, it seems like a mismatch of the visa and the passport number would be guaranteed to cause problems either with the airline or going through Indian immigration. Seemed like a better bet just to go with a different airline and keep the passport. Which she did, without issue.

OK, thanks for clarifying.

I don't know how low probability that is.

I went to Indonesia a year or so ago, and a few days before departure, realized my U.S. passport didn't have two consecutive pages available and they required it - that passport was with me for my year as an ex-pat in India, and they stamp everytime you leave and re-enter the country, seemingly randomly on empty or otherwise full pages, but basically ensuring there were no two consecutive empty pages avaialble. Luckily, I'm a dual Canadian, and I rarely use that passport, so that had lots of empty pages there, and Indonesia doesn't require a visa so I was all good. The stamp immigration gave me didn't need half a page, much less two consecutive, but i took the better safe than sorry approach. Wasn't going to chance it.

On another trip to India, we were doing CVG-ORD-IST-BOM on TK (AA first leg). On arrival at ORD, TK caught that my wife's OCI visa in her passport was good, but she forgot the actual separate booklet, which is supposed to be required (not anymore for new OCIs...but used to be. Somehow, my wife convinced the TK staff she was good and they allowed her to check in/board, and when asked on arrival, immigration sent her right through normally after very lightly scolding her about that she really should have it.

The date of issue of the ticket is printed in large font size at the top of the ticket ereceipt.

Just an update. Talked to 1K customer care. They called me back 1.5 hours after I called, and they offered to let us apply the full value of the ticket as long as it is still visible in their system (it may disappear any minute, will book today as soon as I have a chance). They even waived the change fee, as we had already paid it before. UA really didn't need to do any of this, especially waiving the change fee (since we did change the ticket to push her departure back one day before we cancelled). What an awesome airline. ^ :-:

Will post an update when I try to use the $$$.

Edited to add: Residual value applied to new itinerary, everything worked out great! :-)

One thing to add, it appears that at the airport when they adjusted my wife's itinerary last Christmas they did something quite strange, that elicited a "huh?" from each of the agents that looked at it over the last couple of days---something about converting the trip into two one ways where one of those retained the original ticket number---this might have been done to keep her return. I didn't know that was even possible. It was never fully explained to me. The moral of the story: it makes sense to ask questions to understand exactly what an agent is doing when adjusting a reservation, as this can have big time ramifications later on.

Nice! Every once in a while common sense prevails. :)