Unexpected UA refund - how do I fix and avoid last minute issues?
 

So I recently made a UA booking using a combination of future flight credit amount and additional cash to cover the fare difference, and then ended up cancelling it. The future credit went back to credit and UA refunded the cash portion I paid to credit card. So far, so good.

Today, I am seeing an additional refund to my account equal to the future flight credit. I’ve already booked another ticket using the future flight credit, so wasn’t expecting this additional refund. My main concern is this impacting my existing booking based on the future flight credit. The airline will likely sort this out eventually and reverse the refund. I’m not owed a refund so that’s fine but prefer not to deal with flight cancellations or other last minute issues.

Anyone else experienced this recently? How long did it take for the airline to fix their mistake? Advice welcome as I’ve never run into this before - it’s usually no or too little refund :)

I would doubt that they will catch the error and everything will stay as is. I would just leave it. I would find it slightly unnerving too, but large companies don't know how to fix small accounting issues usually.

huh? Companies, even large ones, are very good at auditing, in general. It will almost certainly be caught - they are very good at tracking each roller collected and refunded. What they do about it is a different story.

several years ago (though admittedly, may have been pre-merger), I bought an E+ seat for my dad on EWR-CVG, don’t remember the amount, but must have been in the $20-$30 range. There was IRROPS on the day of, and on his rebooked flight, they didn’t have E+. Whatever. I didn’t see a refund a couple of weeks later, so called in. That refund processed, and maybe 2 days later, another one came in. I eventually got charged again to cancel out the second refund. So that they don’t know how to fix accounting issues is nonsense - they have all the info. they need to fix it - if they wanted. That said, I don’t think they’d just cancel a ticket over this.

I had something similar happen last night with an etc on your bog standard <24h cancellation.

I had this happen a few years ago. Wifey and I had an Open Jaw EWR-MSY/SEA-EWR in May 2014. On 30-Dec-13 I got a mysterious refund on my card for the full amount of the ticket. Then on 03-Jan-14 I got re-charged the same amount.

In your case, it sounds like the excess refund is linked to the cancelled trip, not the new one.

The best advice I can give you is to be prepared to pay that amount back at boarding. Keep your paperwork (original ticket receipt and credit card statement) to prove how much they accidentally refunded you in case they try to get you to buy a new ticket last minute. You could even check your itinerary one every other week and make sure it doesn't show a balance due.

Personally I’d call UA and ask about it.

My point is, did you call to ask them to fix the 2nd mistaken refund? No, they just did it. I think it is difficult to call a company and say, "Hey, you gave me too much money, you should take some back." And that's what the OP was asking about. I maybe worded it inelegantly, but the customer service/complaint system isn't really designed for this type of interaction. Like what is the opposite of small claims court? Small 'you better take my money' court?

If people have success stories about calling United in the past 10 years when they were undercharged (or over refunded), I would be interesting in hearing how those interactions went, and so would the OP probably, since that was the question. So far in this thread it seems to be, "I had this happen and UA fixed it on their own within a short amount of time." So, I still say to just ignore it.