Redwood839

LOL, the moment they would've said $500 fee I would've thrown the phone immediately.

Thankfully I have a two part last name that United funks out on and you have to enter it just right for it to pull up my reservation.

Artpen100

Exactly (sorry, the like button wasn't working). If the operator is shady, the CC company will be able to detect it easily once they look into it, and will reverse the charge. They are not stupid, and won't knowingly continue to support a shady operation (because of their own potential for liability).

leiserom

We were in Kauai as Hurricane Lane approached. Being as we live in Houston I know hurricanes are to be respected. A lot of people were saying hey it will be fun. Well it ceases to be if the power goes out and the airport shuts down. Anyway we decided to go home early. I simply went down to a hotel computer logged on and changed the flights. We got some small credits for a fare difference which I used in the summer. Of course they charged a 200/ticket change fee. Later the same day they issued a waiver(after I changed the ticket). I called United and they refunded the 400(took a couple of days). While Lane did not have a material effect at least we got home. Having been stuck in SFO last year because of Harvey we weren't taking any chances.

Marriott charged one extra night for early departure. I argued with them hey a hurricane is coming. Complained to corporate when I got home. No luck.

Seems like to me the original OP did not talk to United. Uniteds contact numbers are on their website. I sure would not call any other number. But I rarely use third party sites like Orbitz. Use them only when booking on a foreign carrier where I don't want to set up more FF accounts.

Zorak

If they told you there was a $500 fee, sure, but what if they just told you the total cost was $x?

"I'm sorry I'm having trouble pulling up your reservation, could you please spell out your name for me again?"

Especially when you are tired/stressed out/in a hurry etc. it's easy to overlook small details that don't add up; that's pretty much the basis for all scams.

I consider myself pretty vigilant and observant but I can still see how I might fall for something like this under the right circumstances (probably not this exact sort of thing because I tend to either have speed dial for companies I interact with frequently or would call from within the app, but who knows).

NotSoFrequentColorado

I wasn't aware of bogus airline "agents". How would he have gotten hooked up with one? Google United Airlines and then pick the wrong link? Want to know how to avoid this!

m44

Wrong advice. There is a time limit in the Fair Credit Billing Act to dispute charges. Non-receipt of services for you paid is a legitimate dispute. There are other reasons for the dispute listed in that law too.
Chargeback is a technical term (not used in the law, but used by CC procedures) to take back the money and most often are used for suspected fraudulent transactions. Certainly misleading a customer into making a new purchase when exchanging a ticket and promising credit is sufficiently fraudulent to trigger a chargeback.
For both - a dispute and a chargeback the merchant has easy defenses - all it takes for them is to prove (i.e. provide evidence) that the charges are legitimate.
And ultimately - if the chargeback is validated - the merchant always has a right to start a lawsuit or even a collection process to recover funds due - if the merchant has proofs required for such process.
Of course - conversely - the customer - always has small claims courts to file a complaint for money damages.

princeville

OP joined in 2009. I do hope OP will provide more information because I'm curious to know what happened. In this circumstance, I'd be surprised if UA would even charge a phone fee. I've never been charged one for calling to change an existing reservation even if the change was voluntary.

That's probably exactly what happened. I think I usually go to the airline's website to look up the customer service number, but this is a good reminder to always do that and not just google. The other day I was googling how to replace a damaged passport, and it was disturbing how many results came up before the official travel.state.gov site that I was actually looking for.

smandkjc

We also changed our flight back to New Zealand as Hurricane Lane approached.
We contacted Air New Zealand through Messenger and it was changed to an earlier flight at no charge within 2 minutes.
Great service.

mozilla

Hope OP gets back to this, it's always disappointing to see people receiving tons of goods advice only to receive no more follow-ups with the community forever left in the dark about the outcome.

^ This alone should clear the matter up and is something OP could easily and quickly contribute, preventing the topic from derailing too much into speculation. Remember there's still no proof that this was an actual scam rather than a genuine misunderstanding of a legitimate transaction. We only hear one version of the story.

Note it is possible there will be 2 transactions, one legitimate transaction from UA for the ticket and another for the "service fee". In that case also the vendor for the fee should be mentioned.

wu_lee

Hey everyone, thanks for the detailed responses, I wasn't able to log back in and reply yesterday for some reason.

As suspected by many of you, it was in fact a bogus travel agency fraudulently posing as United Airline agents. I feel like an utter and complete idiot over the whole thing as I'm generally pretty skeptical and vigilant. Though trying to tell myself it was just because I hadn't slept at all and was pretty frantic to get home to deal with a small family emergency (and not risk being stuck in Hawaii...ironic given all the times i've wished to be stuck in Hawaii). We were literally throwing our things into suitcases while on the phone with the fake UA agent at 6am HST.

I can't actually recall how I got the number, I thought I'd searched United Airlines on Google and dialed number in the Google one-box that shows at the top, which if I look now is a valid number. But maybe they'd placed an AdWords ad that said United Airlines with their number at the top and I mistook. (

Unfortunately Chase says as much as they'd love to help, because I knowingly provided my payment info, and they did ultimately render the service of booking a flight home for me, they can't file a chargeback dispute, even if the agents lied to and mislead me. If I'd never received the ticket home then they'd be able to. They suggested my best recourse would be to complain to the BBB or other government agency to at least help make sure the company has a harder time doing this to others in the future. United Customer Care has been very helpful in investigating with me, so I'm extra grateful the moderators were able to change the post title for me.

At this point I mostly feel like an idiot. Lessons learned. Thanks again for all of your help suggesting how to check things, what to look for and the red flags to investigate. I greatly appreciate it.

MatthewLAX

Sounds like a fraud non-UA agent.

Happens from time to time with my own clients.

They always tack on these "absurd" service fees.

The fraud comes in when the agents photoshop UA receipts to make it appear like all charges came from UA.

WineCountryUA

If the return was canceled then a credit does exist (for a rebooking) -- so the claim was sort of correct.

Doubtful there is a UA transaction as the flight was not with UA.

WineCountryUA

Thanks for the update -- it is unfortunate these folks exist but think of this as perhaps saving you from a bigger issue in the future and perhaps saving a few other folks from this same sort of scum.

mikeschemm

In spite of what Chase told you, if you follow the Chase instructions to do a written dispute, they are required to take the charge off your credit card and do an investigation. Also, in spite of what Chase told you, the Chase agent was probably wrong about it not being a fraudulent charge if you were told it was United, but it was another company, and you were charged a bogus fee. And probably, if it was fraudulent, the company who actually posted the charge on your credit card may not dispute the charge back, in which case you will not have to pay the credit card charge.

WineCountryUA

But the SOP of these scammers they don't say they are United employees -- you call them and they ask if you want help with your UA ticket. They let you make that assumption -- because you called them. They advertise themselves are helping you with travel problems on United. Again they don't claim to be United but the let you assume that. Additionally on the fee -- they quote you the full price including the fee -- they just don't mention how much of the "cost" is fees. You agree to the total price.

However, it is worth the try to do the formal, written chargeback -- but the success is not guaranteed if there was no explicit statement on being UA and the OP agreed to the total price.