channa

It's been almost 3 years under the United name. This issue has been going on for well over a decade when you include the issue at CO. It is CO's systems after all, and with that came CO's technology problems. Lots of them.

greg99

So, at what point does not caring and unfulfilled commitments to "fix" something become a deliberate choice by UA to keep things the way they are?

If there had been a benefit to UA, they would have made the change already.

Greg

channa

It's been that way for a while.

They know it's a problem, and they can't or won't fix it. I personally think they can't or don't know how, and since this is not a revenue generator (in fact, it may be a revenue loser to get it working correctly), it's low priority to even look at.


Yup.

swm61230

But they are loosing my revenue because they can't get it working correctly. So it may not be a revenue generator it really would be a revenue retainer if they could actually get their computer system working properly.

channa

CO management is short-sighted and doesn't measure that, so it doesn't count.

cesco.g

While the post below considers the current situation a revenue loser for COdbaUA, I am curious about your thoughts, of this being the opposite - if you could elaborate.

FlyWorld

I don't think anyone from CO or UA ever said they committed to fix anything.

I do think there have been a lot of assumptions made that it would get fixed.

This may or may not be on a list of things to be fixed. The truth is that it's either not on a list, or if it's on a list, it's been given a lower priority than everything else they've worked on in the 3 years.

Nobody can look at this state of affairs and reasonably conclude that they care about fixing this.

channa

Upsells are sometimes triggered off the same R inventory. By allocating R to waitlisted upgrades as soon as it's released, they may be depriving themselves of upsell revenue for those who may have purchased an upgrade (granted, at the expense of waitlisters).

Recall this management team's big success story has been ancillary revenue. This is an area where United excels. In most other areas, United lags the competition. So if they can sell that upgrade for $200, but lose an $20,000 annual customer in the process, they probably see that as a win, as they can attribute the $200 gain to their policies and processes, but they $20,000 loss will get clouded with all sorts of other stuff and be dismissed as normal customer turnover.


Or they've attempted to fix it but run into so many constraints due to their poor technology choices, that they've marked it off as unfixable.

greg99

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but I just don't believe that this can possibly be something that is that complicated to fix. They just don't wanna, because it would be bad for their business to change it to the way we think is proper.

I simply believe (for reasons such as those you enunciate) that they have come to the conclusion that this isn't actually a problem at all, but in fact a benefit to those that management views as their true customers, the stockholders.

Greg

channa

If they're constrained by SHARES architecture (which I understand fundamentally does not have any sort of trigger mechanism), it's possible that they cannot fix this in their current system, rather they can rework other processes and improve it (and perhaps they have already done so).

Remember they're running their business on the technology equivalent of an abacus. There's only so much they can do.

Baze

I think you hit the nail squarely on the head with this statement.

Kacee

That's sheer speculation about UA's internal processes. It's not consistent with what I've seen nor with many reports in this forum ("I was waitlisted, R never opened, there was a buy-up offer, and all the BF seats disappeared.")

My personal belief is that there is some fundamental systems issue that prevents dynamic waitlist processing, and it's just not high enough priority for UA to devote the resources to fix it.

I will add that I view it as a net positive for those of us who know how the systems work. We get more upgrades because R opens when it should not.

PebbleBeach

I think I waste almost as much time checking for open R status than the actual BIS time of these flights I want to upgrade. Last night jumped on to find R2 RN2 for a SYD-SFO flight where I had a GPU. Excited, called United but literally lost the seats in real time. Curious if I lost out to another FTer (which I tip my cap) or was there a lag time in auto processing. Either way, there has got to be a better solution for this.

FlyWorld

There is!

In my experience, the solution was to stop playing this game.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

Albert Einstein

goalie

I don't know if PN being available but the upgrade still shows as waitlisted falls into this category but here's what happened a few moments ago...

goalie-parents are flying FLL-IAH-SFO in April and were sponsored by a GS friend where the IAH-SFO segment cleared (PN) but the FLL-IAH segment waitlisted (PN).

I did a dummy booking and expert mode showed PN2 for the FLL-IAH segment so I called but the agent said she saw PN0 . The agent then said, "hang on a moment and let me check FLL-IAH-SFO as I was only checking FLL-IAH" and lo and behold, she came back with "I saw PN2 FLL-IAH so I just cleared your parents"

Could this be a married segment in reverse? And based on what I just experienced, I would advise when seeing R (or PN) >0 on your segment to have the agent check the full routing vs just the segment in question if you are on a multi-segment itinerary