IAH-OIL-TRASH

The discussion was speculation if the $3000 was a one-way or r.t fare. The OP never specified. My speculation (and speculation ONLY) was that $3000 is a one-way fare very few people pay in that market, so odds were it might be a r.t fare. $3000 approximates the price for a late r.t ticket. $1704 was mentioned as an example of a last-minute one-way fare. Noone questioned OP's truthfulness.

findark

Guys...

OP's story is pretty consistent.

notquiteaff

Yes, if you don’t care about status miles, I would fly the completion and each time send a note to Oscar with a copy of the receipt and the previous UA customer “service” interaction.

n198ua

When Jim Goodwin was CEO (gosh how long ago was that) I had a terrible experience on a flight to LHR. Customer care didn’t do anything, in fact it took 3 weeks just to get my first response. I took my next flight on AA (first and only time) and sent the receipt to Mr. Goodwin along with my emails to customer care and their response. A few days later I received a call from someone in the EO profusely apologizing; the refunded my entire ticket price and threw in cash + miles on top of it. If you decide to try out the competition be sure and let Oscar know why.

J S

Quoting from the original post: "That was a $3k one-way ticket"

Lifetimenotelite

I was recently on a SFO-BOS flight that is a PS flight. Sometime during my TPAC flight UA did an equipment swap and what was supposed to be lay flat business seats turned into domestic first cabin.

The gate agent cane on board and gave us $1k ETC.

People may be quick to discount this as no big deal but I was on a high fare and had planned to actually sleep on that flight as I had worked with my colleague for much of the TPAC. At that point in the journey home from Asia the ability to sleep was worth more than the voucher.....

$300 on a non working lay flat should be $1k or more. Without the recline it’s just a regular domestic first class seat.

That’s a 6 hour flight which is half the time of say SFO-NRT flight.

Sucks to be the one with a broken seat.... many of us have been in your shoes.

Kacee

It's usually a little under 6 hours of air time, as west to east is the quicker direction But NRT-SFO tends to be just over 9 hours for same reason, so actually quite a bit more than half. And 5+ hours in a non lie-flat following a TPAC is indeed quite uncomfortable.

gaobest

Mid level premier status isn’t helpful for the consumer until one is 1k / EXP or higher, especially when flying with Sfo / EWR-JFK. If you’ll never realistically reach 1k status, then fly any airline at the best fare and routing. All airlines really don’t care about losing clients.

Sorry about the seat. Now you can try other airlines. Jet blue is really nice.

I fly Sfo/ORD route a lot in paid discounted F/J and basically use google flights for my decision. Big yay for one-way tickets costing half the RT - I remember when a one-way could be as much as a RT!

I don’t miss being loyal to any one airline.

jsloan

But it isn’t.

Here’s a thought experiment for you. UA operates three-class 781s from EWR-SFO. On those planes, if someone told you that your J seat was broken, and offered you $300 either to (a) sit in the same seat, or (b) change to PE, which really is just a regular domestic first class seat, which would you choose?

Personally, I’d keep J 100 times out of 100.

seenitall

I wouldn't. Reclining is very valuable to me. The J meal and extra space, not so much. Why don't we give the OP the benefit of the doubt? S/he paid a lot of money for his/her ticket, and is aggrieved because s/he couldn't recline. I see nothing unreasonable about the OP pegging this loss in value at substantially more than $300. The fact that others of you may view this reduction in service as less valuable and unworthy of a complaint to UA is immaterial.

jsloan

I suspect that if you try it, you'll change your mind. There is plenty of room in a fully-upright UA J seat to sleep, even under the assumption OP was trying to sleep on a westbound flight. There is much less room in a fully-reclined domestic F seat.

I do see the reduction in service as less valuable. And the OP -- who probably isn't reading any of this and likely never will -- is welcome to any opinion he deems fit. That said, OP's opinion really doesn't matter in terms of actually obtaining more recompense from UA. (Neither does mine, for that matter). Experience has shown that it's in the ballpark of what UA will give. Over-the-top suggestions about cash refunds or airline chargebacks are wishful thinking, spurred by a complete misunderstanding of what the product is in the first place. The seat is worth at most $300, because that's the difference between Y and J when supply is plentiful. The remainder of the cost is a payment for using a scarce resource, which OP definitely did.

USA_flyer

I don't agree with your logic. And even if I did you have no idea what the lowest Y fare and the lowest J fare for that particular voyage was but, I am sure the difference was more than $300. If you can find me a fare difference of $300 or less between lowest Y and lowest J on that route on any day on the UA schedule on that aircraft, I will eat my words and agree that $300 was an appropriate compensation.

jsloan

Assuming that flight time is paramount, so only comparing Y and J on the same flight:

Mon 4/6, 5PM: $291 Y, $709 J -- $418.
Sat 4/11, 7:30 PM: $606 Y, $709 J -- $103 (!). (Also, $329 Y, $709 J -- $380 on two other flights that day).

In addition, there are multiple reports of $299 upgrade offers on that route being available during check-in.

USA_flyer

I didn't believe you so I checked sat 11-Apr for myself. United prices out in pounds for me but accordingly, the 7:30pm flight on that day, the fare difference is £80. Is that a lay flat business product or a reclining standard first class product? If the former, I'll eat that slice of humble pie and accept that $300 may be appropriate.

jsloan

Every nonstop flight on that route is operated by lie-flat equipment. That flight is showing as a 28J 757, which is a lie-flat configuration. If you look at the seat map, they appear to have sold a lot of Y seats on that flight, which is why the inventory numbers look like they do. $103 is an exceptionally good value, admittedly.