Mar 1, 2020, 10:34 am
Last edit by: WineCountryUA
POS ==> Point of Sale. For UA, this determines pricing, inventory, fare rules, (in some cases - change fees) ....
Related threads
Different pricing/fare buckets depending on billing country / point of sale
Price delta between united.com/ United app / second phone? (Guam is billing country?)
united handles point of sale by credit card billing address. So will change the price to the local point of sale, based on billing address. If your CC is Canadian with Canadian address, and you start searching from US site, you’ll get the pricing swotcheroo. Sometimes, it’s not much of a difference. Sometimes it is. There can be different class availability, and exchange rate isn’t necessarily up to date.
Online OTAs should let you bill to whatever card you want, so that’s one solution.
Online OTAs should let you bill to whatever card you want, so that’s one solution.
Different pricing/fare buckets depending on billing country / point of sale
Price delta between united.com/ United app / second phone? (Guam is billing country?)
UA forces POS to credit card billing country -- restricts which site/card can be used
Dec 13, 2021, 7:43 pm
#76
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I've flown so many point of sale restricted fares I couldn't even begin to count.
Dec 13, 2021, 10:20 pm
#77
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Dec 13, 2021, 11:47 pm
#78
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Seriously though, I used to do this all the time in Japan by just walking into the No. 1 Travel by H.I.S office in Shinjuku and buying tickets in person. I used to get great deals this way, although sometimes I would end up with orphan segments and have to close loops with awards.
Dec 14, 2021, 1:16 am
#79
Join Date: Jan 2005
Programs: SQ, QF, UA, CO, DL
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That's just POS differentiation (point of sale, not the other POS)
Different pricing/fare buckets depending on billing country / point of sale
There are resident-only fares which go further than POS, as described by this thread. How often are those restrictions enforced? Ymmv
Different pricing/fare buckets depending on billing country / point of sale
There are resident-only fares which go further than POS, as described by this thread. How often are those restrictions enforced? Ymmv
Dec 14, 2021, 8:48 am
#80
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Can anyone who's posted about "resident" fares which require proof of residency to travel post a UA example of such a fare currently on offer through UA's website?
I'm 99.9% confident that what OP encountered is a point of sale restriction. Those are very very common.
I'm 99.9% confident that what OP encountered is a point of sale restriction. Those are very very common.
Last edited by Kacee; Dec 14, 2021 at 8:55 am
Aug 7, 2022, 2:31 am
#81
Join Date: Nov 2006
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Higher airfare with US address
When I search a HAN-USA fare on UA.com, it shows options for $545. At the final booking page, after I entered the (US) CC info, it comes back saying "We have updated the prices and/or currency shown to match the country you selected", and the price increased to a whopping $780. Is there any way to get the original cheaper price? I tried Paypal with a Vietnam address, but it still generated that message.
Aug 7, 2022, 3:50 am
#82
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I have only been able to find a way around this (admittedly a few years back) by changing the addresses in my profile to all - in my case - from UK to US - and then for added peace of mind I used a VPN to pretend I was in the US. I haven't tried using paypal or this method recently. What happens if you try to book using for example, Kayak, to see if that ups the price?
Aug 7, 2022, 9:03 am
#84
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UA's IT is very good at imposing point of sale restrictions. As already suggested, using an OTA is the way around this (but brings with it all the associated issues, including necessity of using the OTA to make changes).
Aug 7, 2022, 11:24 am
#87
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I ran into a analagous problem trying to book flights found on Google. UA not only updated the price when I tried to use a US credit card, but it would also only give me a basic economy class fare when every window up to the final one had been showing the correct (eight times as large) business class fare that I wanted.
There was no way I could find to make it revert to a business class fare, so I gave up on it in the end and found a different itinerary that didn't have that problem.
There was no way I could find to make it revert to a business class fare, so I gave up on it in the end and found a different itinerary that didn't have that problem.
Aug 7, 2022, 12:43 pm
#90
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When I search a HAN-USA fare on UA.com, it shows options for $545. At the final booking page, after I entered the (US) CC info, it comes back saying "We have updated the prices and/or currency shown to match the country you selected", and the price increased to a whopping $780. Is there any way to get the original cheaper price? I tried Paypal with a Vietnam address, but it still generated that message.
Have merged into a prior discussion as suggested earlier to provide more situations and alternatives.
As this has plagued many over the years, mMight be handy for someone to summarize the potential workarounds and place in the thread's wiki
Last edited by WineCountryUA; Aug 7, 2022 at 12:49 pm Reason: call for wiki suggestions