emcampbe

seems crazy that UA can not even get this sort of right.

I flew a short AirAsia flight within Thailand this month, and we pre-ordered - items were delivered to us, all with stickers on it that said something like ‘pre-order - not for sale onboard’ (I’m paraphrasing). How FD can make this work, especially given all the glitchiness with pretty much the rest of their customer-facing tech, but not UA is just absurd.

now, granted I’m not a 1K, but can not recall a time since I’ve flown UA - that’s going on 20 years now as my primary carrier - where I have had seats re-assigned - that wasn’t due to a change of aircraft with a different configuration. And yeah, those aren’t fun (not sure how the algorithm even decides - but when it’s happened on UA, it’s actually been better than on other carriers like AC, where, for example, I just got moved l from something like row 18 (roughly halfway between front to back) on a 220 to row 35 or something very near the back on a 7M8, with a dozen+ empty rows in front). I’m certainly not suggesting
it doesn’t happen, but Im willing to bet, given the persistent reports in here (not to mention my experience) that pre-order issues are much more common than random seat changes.

if by ‘at the moment’ you mean ‘always’, then probably. At least, that’s been my experience.

kirkwoodj

First time getting my preordered burger after many attempts occurred the other day. I'm sure my MP account was wondering where the biweekly ETC deposit was!

Xyzzy

Did it come with fries? AUS-EWR the burgers that were catered for F did not have them and the FA told me the fries nly show up out of hubs.

arma5

I preordered the burger a few weeks ago, and it did come with fries, and it was DEN-LAX so it is compatible with your theory.

(The fries were these sad little potato lumps that had no crisp to them. I had such high hopes, perhaps because of my recent flights in J on Austrian where I prepped by reading all the trip reports I could find, and one stood out about how the Austrian flying chefs have figured out how to make even fries work well in the air, and here United is with their new attempt at fries so surely they've done their homework. Oh well.) [Edit: I see that Matthew has some tips on how to succeed better with this round of United fries, at https://liveandletsfly.com/crispy-fr...ited-airlines/ ]

(I am also 1 for 1 on preordering my burger, which I regard as a mixed outcome since I had gotten my hopes up for an ETC instead based on kirkwoodj's stories.

kirkwoodj

Yes with fries. Flying from non-hubs, there were not fries with the (my) burger given to pax in front of me. So that story jives.

rabilancia

Flying Polaris DEN-FRA in 4 days. Yesterday, 5 (days out) after getting a text & app notification to pre-order, I tried to do so & 2 of the 4 selections (IMO the 2 better choices) were already "sold out." I'll wait to see what's offered when on board.

docbert

After trying multiple times over a roughly 24 hour period I was finally able to get it to work and successfully ordered meals on my 2 domestic first flights yesterday.

In both cases, when the FA's came around to take orders I was told they didn't have what I had pre-ordered, and given my choice of the same 2 meals everyone else was being offered...

ikwia

I've had fries with the burger at least a dozen times from non-hubs. I'm fact, I've never seen the burger without fries, although I have seen the burger not catered at all. Some non-hubs even have variants of the burger that are better than the standard burger (e.g., include bacon).

kirkwoodj

No burgers loaded on our SEA-IAH flight yesterday. At least 6 pax around us had preordered them. The new ropa vieja beef enchiladas we preordered were both loaded and were delicious

bluedemon211

Pre-order on international flights seems to be consistently available (actually catered a little less so) since August 1. Pre-order on domestic wide-bodies was also supposed to happen on August 1 and never materialized. Any sense when that might happen?

SkiBikeBeer

Flight is about 2.5 days from departure. Super helpful pre-order options... all 3 are "out of stock". When I first checked, it was only the first two options as out of stock.

narvik

Re: United's Pre-Order Meal 'system'

What is the actual purpose of United's meal pre-ordering?
Is it just to give passengers the impression United is on par with other, properly catered airlines?
Has there really been an increase in passengers getting the meal they want, after introducing meal pre-ordering? The current implemented system just seems to be shuffling the same amount of each meal around, without actually changing what is loaded onto the plane.
Could be wrong here, but at this point I can't identify any real benefit.

bmwe92fan

Not trying to be too cynical -- but this seems to be just another way for UA to push responsibility for good service to the passenger instead of a way to provide better service -- I mean honestly -- 5 days before your flight and you can't get chicken instead of beef?

It's all a smoke screen -- and the normal J passenger will hear something like this -- "I'm so sorry that you didn't preorder your meal for your $11k ticket -- I do have the vegetarian ravioli left with a crushed croissant, a frozen appetizer -- and no -- there is no sundae on this flight"

Once again UA promises us the elevator and we get the shaft... The point of pre-ordering is to provide BETTER service -- on UA it just annoys everyone!

narvik

Likely that United just provisions ~16 meals each of the three choices on a 789 (for instance) no matter what, and then distributes maybe 75% half-heartedly according to their pre-order system, and uses the 25% buffer for pre-takeoff order taking priorities. (numbers just a guess)
Seems to be no actual organization in place that could ever make this work properly, I agree.

bmwe92fan

The issue comes down to a simple financial decision -- and as someone that used to work in the industry I am quite sure of this -- if you aren't willing to spend a few extra hundred dollars per flight to "overstock" premium meals for tickets that cost on average more than $7k -- well then you get UA... You would NEVER see this on NH or SQ or EK -- UA is just cheap plain and simple -- and their attempts to provide more "choice" just lays bare to what they really care about....