Something is missing in this. Was there a possible reroute that was under two hours? Did the first agent not look at alternatives?

What state is this PNR in? heck https://www.united.com/en/US/manageres/mytrips
Is it in the Cancelled tab? Past?
FFC? are generally in https://www.united.com/en/US/account

Is the trip date passed?

I was happy with a refund as I cannot fly the trip due to no entry to US. Once the agent confirmed it was OK for a refund I was sold.

Cancelled indeed
FFC? are generally in https://www.united.com/en/US/account

No

This is where the agent potentially messed up, It there is a viable reroute within the 2 hour window, UA may then not offer a refund.

Sometimes happens, so you will have to call to use (which IMO you should do for FFC as the online rebooking tool is flaky)

You probably can call and get it moved to FFC area

Currently flying PIT-EWR-IAH-BJX, but had a schedule change of 1hr30min to arrive in BJX pretty late (also leaving 1hr 30min earlier). I want to just change to an earlier flight IAH-QRO. QRO is 88 miles as the crow flies from BJX, so it seems to me this would be valid based on the Jetstream rules listed in the wiki (alternative airport within 100 miles).

Just called in and the agent tried to, but failed to get this to work. Misinformed agent? Am I missing something here? Ironically she said I could refund, but it was under 2 hours

I know I could get a direct flight to IAH but I need the miles ;)

3 legs of a 6-leg RT to Europe in September just got canceled (not rebooked), including 1st leg of outbound. Cash ticket. At "Cancel Options" the only choice is FFC. No refund option. Gonna call but not happy that UA appears to be playing games here hiding the easy refund option.

Was this an all new cash purchase? no FFC, no ETC, no travel bank, ... If none of those and no approrpiate reroute offer, it should be an easy refund call.

Yep, all cash purchase, easy refund. But one shouldn't have to call for such an obvious refund situation. Those not as savvy as us will think FFC is their only option because that is the single option offered. I thought UA had stopped playing games with refunds, but evidently not.

Couldn't it be a website coding error?

well, the rule is when UA can't get you to your destination within 2 hours. So for domestic ticket the automatic refund notice tends to show up. For intl. trips where UA can use UA-codeshares on *A airlines easily the situation is much less black/white and UA understandably wants you to call them and discuss options.
In my experience there isn't much of a pushback, but most travelers will not know about the options that an agent has access to for TATL/TPAC travel and if you still want to fly ... speaking with an agent is the right choice.

Crazy experiences with flight credits
 

In April I was super excited that flying might be coming back, and when the no-change-fees "book with confidence" advertising started, I stupidly bit, probably without reading the fine print. I booked over 14 trips for the remainder of the year with all that "confidence". Oops. My major excitement was being able to secure

Fast forward 3 months, United has swapped planes or fully cancelled flights on almost every single itinerary I've booked. Highlights so far have been:
* Booked international travel with Premium Plus (paid) legs in US connecting with Polaris over the pond (SFO<->EWR<->LHR<->BER), was downgraded to Economy on the domestic legs without notice even though it was originally paid premium plus (no such cabin on the new flight). No refund was given either. When I called, they told me "well, yeah, you're on a priority upgrade waitlist for that" to which I responded the new flight had no such cabin. Ended up having to rebook. Then this entire thing happened again on the rebooked flight!
* Due to the above changes, I rebooked again flying SFO <-> EWR <-> BRU <-> BER instead. The $133 tax for transiting in a premium cabin via LHR, when I rebooked to connect via BRU instead, were not refunded. Had to request it three times and the agents were completely confused
* Found out the rebooked flight was actually $300 cheaper than my original booking, but they would not give me that credit. So I decided to cancel the itinerary thinking I could just rebook it. Big mistake. When cancelling, it turned the ticket into a flight credit and the taxes into an ECert and I could no longer combine them back? So I had to spend more money to rebook because you can't combine ECerts and flight credits.
* I used the remaining ECerts to rebook some other flights. Guess what, United changed those flights also and rebooked me on new flights automatically... that had 18 hour layovers. ??? These were domestic trips! Called to rebook and discovered I'd lost all the upgrades.

On and on and on...

Basically I'm now stuck. I would just request refunds and book closer to the trips at this point because United's flights keep getting swapped, but they won't give me a refund, only flight credits, and the flight credits keep having all sorts of issues when trying to actually use them.

I can't possibly be alone here. I'm sure I've lost money in the shuffle, and now I've realized that through all this rebooking and combining/splitting of flight credits and ECerts, any flight credits have been slowly creeping back their expiration dates because, apparently, if you combine two flight credits and then end up cancelling or changing that trip, the new credits take on the closest expiration date across all certs. Eek.

This is mostly just grumbling but am I alone here in wishing they would just issue certs? I took a good faith position to spend money with them on resuming travel in full and I feel like I'm being jerked around quite a bit now and am going to actually lose money on all this (and time!).

If the schedule changes resulted in a 2 hour change in departure or arrival (from the originally booked schedule), you are due a refund. With 18 hour layovers, you probably qualify. Also, the experience of most (recently) are ETC s from flights booked with ETCs are new and have a new 2-year window.

As for the changes, in April there was more optimism things internationally would improve, that has not happened and all the airlines have had to re-adjust. Even now, there is still great uncertainty. But if you booked in April, you have until April 2022 to commence travel and the ETCs should be even further out.

Glad I caught this. My Koa-yyc trip was changed by a few hours and I thought it was still six hours


Anyways called and they cancelled and refunded no problem (at least as a 1k)

UA has always been really good with these changes over the years for me can’t complain one bit

thanks !!

Quick question: I have a booking AAA-ZZZ in September. I'm thinking of changing it to BBB-ZZZ in October, for a very small fare difference. If UA cancels my new flight from BBB and reroutes me, can I still choose to receive a full refund on the ticket (both the original fare paid and the additional date difference)?

Does it make any difference if I do a ticket change vs if I cancel the first ticket and receive a credit, then use the credit towards purchase of the new ticket?

Thanks.

Yes.

I would do it in one operation if possible. In theory, it shouldn't matter, because the system should see cancel / rebook as a change and proceed accordingly. If you ended up with a new PNR, as opposed to keeping the same PNR with the new flights in it, you could have a problem getting a full refund to your original form of payment. That shouldn't happen in any case, but there are ways to imagine it happening in a cancel / rebook scenario (basically, if UA mistakenly gave you a 'refund' to an Electronic Travel Credit, you'd probably be stuck with that henceforth).

there is essentially no difference doing one or the other. Canceling and rebooking just takes two steps instead of one. Essentially canceling is the same as a change, with the selection of your new itinerary later vs. now. There is absolutely no reason I can imagine not to do this as a change if you know what you want (unless you think the fare will drop later, and even then, you can still take advantage of a same flight drop later, thought it is a bit of a PITA).