Horsefly

Greetings! New user here, so go easy on me.

I had an experience which seemed odd, and someone on another board suggested I post here to get some thoughts from experts.

Around two months ago, I bought a regular Economy round-trip ticket to bring our daughter home from college for Thanksgiving, from San Luis Obispo (CA) to Denver and back. Early last week, she was contacted by a company that wanted to fly her to their office for a job interview. The interview would be after her original flight to Denver. Fortunately, the company offered to fly her to Denver after her interview, so she still gets to come home. I needed to cancel the Denver-bound leg (SBP-LAX-DEN), but keep the return flight (DEN-SBP). I called the Mileage Plus number (I'm lifetime Premier Gold, although that doesn't do much for me), and spoke to an agent. It took her quite a while, but when she was done she gave me the impression that there was a $200 change fee, but after it all shook out I was getting a $100 voucher for future travel. Unfortunately, I realized a few days later when I looked at my credit card expenses that they had actually charged me the $200 change fee as an additional charge, not out of the cost of the flights I was giving up.

It somehow didn't seem to make sense: I'm giving back seats on two flights that they can now re-sell. And for this, I pay an extra $100? I was going to call back and complain, but I have a feeling it will get me nowhere.

I also wondered if I would have been better off with this plan (too late now): Don't tell them anything, but after the trip to Denver was to have happened tell United that she missed her flight but found another way to get home, but that she still needs her return flight. I know they would normally cancel her return flight if she didn't make the outbound flight, but would I be able to short circuit that?

Thoughts?

Miles Ahead

The change fee is always new money. If the fare difference is $100, you get a $100 voucher after paying the $200 fee.

WineCountryUA

Welcome to FT!, Horsefly

The first rule of air fares is to leave logic at the door

Yes for UA, change fees are funded by "new" money and not from the original ticket funds.

When you make a change, the entire itinerary fare is re-computed as if you purchased that ticket at the time of change. So that likely lead to a higher fare for the new trip. You can not change just a segment. Air fares are not built by segments but rather by the entire itinerary.

That would likely not work. Once you miss a flight, generally the only way to prevent the auto-cancellation is to show up at the airport within hours and reschedule. Skipping segment, mid itinerary, is a bad idea.

No Show / Skipping / or Flying United Airlines Flight Segment(s) Out of Order?

Often1

Sorry, but the phone agent did exactly the right thing. Without looking at your ticket and the exact fare buckets of what was issued and the reissued ticket, it is impossible to say that the actual calculations were correct, but they sound roughly in order.

1. You purchased a round-trip non-refundable ticket for $x
2. You changed it by cancelling the first segment.
3. A new ticket is reissued for just the one-way DEN-SBP

This results in a change fee of $200 and it is likely that the new one-way fare as issued was $100 less than the total original fare. Thus, UA issued a voucher for her use for $100. Presuming that she flies again within the year it is valid, the net cost to you is $100. The purpose of the change fee is as a penalty not for "giving" anything back. UA also sells refundable changeable fares. Nobody would purchase those more expensive fares if they could do what you propose.

mduell

One ways are often more expensive than half round trips, or sometimes round trips.

You booked a non-flexible ticket, in exchange for a discount, so now to make any changes they charge a fee. You could avoid this by purchasing a more expensive flexible ticket.

There's some weird delusion that airfare is cost-plus; it's not, it's value based.

NikoLGA

That does work.

I’ve done it the honest way, I was flying EWR-YYZ for Christmas, and the plane was 6+ hours late with no gate agent in sight, so I bought a cheap one way on Porter. I called the Premier Desk and they protected my return.

That being said, the plane was 7 hours late on Christmas Eve might receive more sympathy than I missed my flight.

B747SP

In the case of IRROPS, you are not only entitled the protection of the return segment, you should also be entitled a refund of the first segment not flown. In the OP's case though, it is not possible to predict if there will be an IRROPS on her daughter's flights on that day, so it is very risky and most likely will end up in the return getting cancelled and the entire ticket value getting lost.

txaggiemiles

I guess too late now but since you state the interview was after the flight to DEN, and the company was flying her to the office for the interview, just having the company book a r/t flight from DEN to the interview and back to DEN would seem to have been the easiest fix.

Horsefly

I actually didn't mean it that way. Sorry for the confusion. Her original ticket to Denver would have been on Saturday (tomorrow), but that is the day she is now flying to the interview.

Thanks everyone for confirming that that although it felt like I was being robbed, it was at least an honest robbery.

I'm not sure what my lesson learned is on this though. Pay the extra for changeable tickets, or maybe fly Southwest.

I should mention that the telephone agent told me I would receive an email about the voucher. I never did, and about a week ago I bought another ticket for my other daughter. I didn't notice until after I was done that no voucher was applied, so I called the premier desk again. The agent says it should have been, so she goes off for a few minutes to work it. When she comes back she tells me it is all fixed and I should see a credit on my card soon. Of course, as of now I see no credit. I'm starting to feel picked on....

jsloan

Welcome to FT. :-)

The lesson to learn here is that airlines have a vastly different idea of the value of airfare than most people in the general public. For example, I just selected a San Diego to Denver round-trip flight for 12/12 to 12/20. The best available economy price is $204 round-trip. The full price, unrestricted ticket (Y fare) is $2428 (!). As far as United is concerned, it's offering a 90% discount on that flight in exchange for certain conditions -- advance purchase restrictions, inventory restrictions, non-refundability, and a $200 change fee being foremost among them. Now, most people would never pay $2428 for that flight, which is why this interpretation tends to surprise people.

Also, airfare is priced and sold in a matter unlike almost anything else, and ideas that make sense in other contexts -- "I'm returning inventory to them, so I shouldn't owe them anything" -- simply don't apply. For one thing, the airlines routinely sell more tickets than they have seats, knowing from experience that situations like your daughter's will come up and some people will cancel. When they end up with more people than seats, they'll offer a voucher for future travel to someone who's willing to change flights -- they'd happily offer your daughter $300 in order to sell one more of those $2428 tickets. :-)

If avoiding change fees is your primary goal, Southwest may be the right choice; they have a good network out of Denver. However, there's a downside -- not only are they frequently more expensive than competing airlines (despite their reputation -- that's the reason they don't allow their fares to be viewed on third-party sites like Expedia), they're limited in a lot of other ways too. Most notably, if a United flight has a mechanical delay, you may be able to get them to put you on an American or Delta flight, for example. If a Southwest flight has a mechanical delay, you can wait for the Southwest flight or get a refund and pay the last-minute price with somebody else -- they don't have any agreements with other carriers to accept their passengers.

Based on your message, I'd guess this is the first time you've ever needed to pay a change fee, so I'm not sure I would change airlines just to avoid the next occurrence. :-)

PS: Good luck to your daughter on the interview. ^

Often1

Apples and oranges. When the flight is cancelled or substantially delayed, you are entitled to cancel the segment without penalty or price increase for the remaining segments. That is what happened in your case. Your remaining segment was not "protected" it simply was not cancelled, you were not charged a change fee for dropping the delayed segment and your ticket was not repriced for dropping that segment either.

That is an entirely different situation from the OP's in which the daughter is making a voluntary change. That will incur the penalty ($200), +/- fare difference (the $100 credit). The UA COC expressly require that all segments be flown in sequence. Its systems will auto-cancel the remaining segment(s) if any segment is not flown.

It's really important to read the relevant fare rules for the specific ticket you choose to purchase. You don't need to worry about pages of discussion about stopovers and open jaws, but you do need to understand what a change or skipping a segment will cost or is likely to do.

jsloan

Sadly, this is fairly common with United. I think I've only ever gotten a voucher email once. The voucher will not be applied automatically -- you would have had to enter the voucher code to use it.

In order to find out whether or not the agent retroactively applied the voucher due to the circumstances, go to united.com, log in, click the "Manage" link for the itinerary in question, and then scroll down to "Add E-mail Address and Request Receipt." Click that, select or enter your email address, and hit Submit. This should cause your receipt to be regenerated. You can then click the "View Current Reservation" button and scroll down to "View Receipt." Look for the Form of Payment field. If it just has your credit card information, they probably haven't applied the voucher. However, if it says something like "MISC DOCUMENT," there's a good chance that it has and you should get a refund to your card shortly.

(In order to apply the voucher, the simplest thing for the agent to do would have been to (temporarily) cancel the ticket for your other daughter and then to reissue it with new payment information. The "MISC DOCUMENT" in this case is the temporarily cancelled ticket; you might also see a voucher number on the receipt. The difference between the amount that you paid and the cost of the new ticket after applying the voucher would then be refunded. It may take a few days.)

TObject

Every time I find a fare I like, confirming with wife before buying it, when she says, “Let us wait a couple of weeks,” or “Yes, but let’s go a day earlier.”

Or, she says something like, “Can we stay an extra day?” after I already bought the tickets.

So, every time this happens, I explain to her how airfares work… And she does not believe me. She thinks I am full of it.

And she is probably right. LOL

Anyway, there is not one hard-set rule for every single trip. Check all the options and pick the one that suits you the best.

It is not unusual for weird things to happen with airline prices. Sometimes business class tickets are less expensive than economy class on the same metal. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy a roundtrip ticket plus hotel packaged deal, than it is to buy a one-way. Sometimes adding a train ticket to the itinerary makes it cheaper than the one without train ticket. Sometimes paying with miles is less expensive than redeeming miles for an award. Very often, adding a short flight to a smaller nearby airport makes the ticket cheaper than flying to a big airport without that extra flight.

All kinds of funny things happen to airline ticket prices, which would seem illogical to most common folk.

aktchi

If your plans have any realistic measure of uncertainty, Southwest is the way to go.

VWang1111

Same day change can possibly help if flying on pure United metal.

That's true but also be United does sell "flexible" tickets which are a lot cheaper than the unrestricted Y fare and may only be a small premium depending on the market which are a decent deal if you have to make a change or might need a refund. You would have to look at the full fare rules to make sure it had all the flexibility that you might need.