United 1647 IAH-LAX on 5/9
Was offered $500 to take a flight 3 hours later for my seat in first. Held off to the side through the entire boarding and towards the end my PNR was even updated to the later flight with a seat in J. But right at the last minute someone no-showed and I ended up onboard in my original seat.

Welcome to FT! :)

Anyways a bummer when that happens, isn't it? ;)

VDBs...when we know travel is back!

Was offered $300 for next day IAH-LAX on May 3rd, GA said they were 3 oversold. Eventually told me to board, also eventually cleared 1 standby. Pretty par for the course, I've only scored one VDB in about 10 years and I always volunteer. Thank you Dao...

When you are offered a low amount of $300 for a next day flight, they are more likely not needing your seat. Due to limited available overhead bin space, if I were you, I would board and inform gate agent to get me if my seat is needed.

That is a 100% guaranteed way to move yourself to the very bottom of the list.

And I've seen people accept ~$300 for next-day travel. I don't think there's much correlation between the offer starting low and the likelihood that they'll need a volunteer. (The inverse is not true, however: if the number is high, that really is a sign that they expect to need the seat).

The lowest bid on the app was 550, I was second to ask the GA about it and the guy in front of me bid 250, like I said in my OP they cleared 1 standby so I don't think anyone was VDB. GA did tell me to board right before they started group 2 anyways, good job on him.

For a weird offer in the high side, a pre-pandemic COS-DEN UX flight offered $750 to take a taxi, and the taxi arrived earlier than the flight because they took the volunteers 40 minutes before door close. Got to love CRJs. That was the strangest VDB I signed up for.

If that was CR2 to taxi -- nice upgrade too.

I used to think exactly the same as you two. However, recently about 90% of my flights are popping up the volunteer needed prompt. Some are $200/300/400 and some are $500/600/750. I bid each time and on every single flight they are clearing 2+ standbys. On the $700 flight they cleared the entire list of 12 standbys. Sure, cancellations and misconnects happen and the flight was zeroed out. But I've yet to see any single flight I've taken since the pandemic started and that prompted for a volunteer bid actually use any volunteers. They have all cleared standbys. So hard evidence says the bid price no longer seems to drive how likely they are to need seats.

I also think United is stuck in pandemic mentality of running fewer flights between cities that they zero flights out much sooner than they used to because there's a higher probability of stranding someone overnight to catch the next flight to their destination.

-RM

You experience today does not different much from my (and those reported on FT) pre-COVID VDB results. VDB was very rare.

Additionally, there is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence of speculative bookings and cancellations (moving bookings to the future) made easier with no change fees. This has probably made it much harder to predict the day of travel situation. Past patterns are not as useful today.

Agree 100% with this. There is a much larger variance in day-of-departure inventory, which is going to make it much more difficult for UA's statisticians to gauge overbookings, and they will likely opt to not oversell flights until this variance subsides (with more restrictive policies being re-employed for flight changes). Until then, this thread will likely be very quiet (unfortunately).

ORD-PHL (on ERJ-175). Received my bid amount of $800. Also RT $75 taxi vouchers and 3X $20 Meal vouchers. F on next flight.

I take laps around the airport to get some exercise and don't arrive to the gate til around boarding time. Upon arriving, GA made an announcement looking for volunteers (without giving a price) then immediately called my name. Apparently, she was looking for me earlier so it's a good thing I was there as there were 5 people in line behind me looking to volunteer. I'm not sure if they would have gotten a different amount. Strangely, she tried to clear me right there but the system wouldn't let her. She called for help and was told she had to wait until everyone has boarded. (This is what I would have expected but I wasn't going to complain if she cleared me early) They announced a 50min delay but then boarded after 30. Initially, there were 3 no shows, so I boarded and standbys were cleared. Then one of the no shows appeared so I was unloaded rather than undoing a standby. (Same thing happened to me last time except it was due to someone boarding without scanning their BP.) My last successful VDB was just before the Dao incident ruined VDBs for everyone. Ever since then it's been rare. I assume this is only happening now because they downgauged the route. They initially wanted to put me on an AA flight later that evening. I wanted to stay on UA and was offered to stay overnight (to visit family). They offered a hotel but I asked for a taxi voucher instead (which prob cost them more). I don't think taxi and meal would have been offered had I not asked. Hotel was offered. Not sure I would have gotten F had I not asked either. The only downside was that it took 90min to get a taxi from the company UA set me up with. I probably could have used another taxi company but I'm not familiar enough with ORD taxis to know which one to pick or their rates.

In 2019 or so, I used to see those offers come up a lot during check-in (for VDB, not downgrades). Haven't seen them since then. Have they stopped doing that, or maybe I just haven't been on any overbooked flights?

I think its a matter of flights not being overbooked nearly as much ... I saw my first one in a long time checking in for todays flight. Unfortunately they only let you enter up to $2000 (Every one/thing has its price -- I don't really want the VDB but if UA would be willing to pay me $2k I'll probably do it...)

It does seem like they're upping the preset values -- I remember being a bit offended by how low the "suggested" values were last time (something like $50, $125, and $200 -- these were $150 on the low end and $300 on the high end, forget what the middle one was.