joaozinho

I had a bizarre too long to detail booking experience ticketing an award ticket from USA to SE Asia with UAL Miles on EVA Metal (agent insisted I needed to book separate tickets).

my ticket shows as valid on united and Eva air website for an award booking, but miles for the flight have been redeposited in my account (112k). can I still take my flight and keep the miles? should I call united? will my ticket automatically be cancelled?

hotscot

You don't want that insecurity.
I'd call.
At least verify your booking still exists and is valid.

joaozinho

My last post seems to be deleted. Sorry if I posted something against the rules.

I booked a ticket from the West Coast to Asia. My ticket has been confirmed and ticketed according to United and Eva air. However the miles are used for the booking have been re-credited to my account. I called United to let them know, first reservations, which has assured me that I will be able to take my flight. Taking the advice of a fellow FT’er I called the mileage plus line, which told me that the total cost for my award ticket from the West Coast to Southeast Asia in business class had changed to just 20k miles! They also assured me that I am good to go. Does anyone have any experience with this? It’s nice to have the extra points but I don’t want to steal from a company. I am still nervous that something is going to go very wrong and I will not make my flight.

any advice or insight is greatly appreciated.

sannmann

Check and make sure an actual ticket had been issued.

joaozinho

I have checked and confirmed multiple times... bizarre situation!

cfischer

if you have a ticket you are good to go. UA may ask for more miles later, but they probably won't. Enjoy.

VegasGambler

Just to be clear here -- make sure you have a 13 digit ticket number.

joaozinho

I have it. Is this a known issue?

VegasGambler

I'm not sure that it's an issue. You ended up spending 20k right? And agents told you that that's the cost. There's no award chart; maybe that is the cost.

Is this economy, one way?

emcampbe

[bolding mine] - you sure about that? Seems like a pretty big assumption.

There is a whole department that audits for things like this. There's no doubt in my mind it will be caught sooner or later. What they do about it is another question. If and when it is caught, they're more likely than not to debit the correct mileage, I'd think (even putting the account in negative balance, if there isn't the proper balance to cover). I wouldn't 100% for sure say they would, but again, think that would be more likely than not.

drewguy

^ If OP was happy with the ticket at 112k miles, then he can point to that redeposit as what he thought the cost was. Unless there's a dispute over that, it should be easy to tell United if there's any clawback - hey, this was supposed to be 112k miles. They can't just make up a price later.

ezefllying

It sounds like the OP specifically apprised United -- even MileagePlus -- of the situation and they told him there was no problem, the miles were refunded properly, and he's good to go. If I were OP, I'd shoot myself an email noting the dates, times, and details of those calls, and, if possible, the agent I spoke with. I might even write, for posterity, that I was surprised, but they assured me I did everything right. (To be clear, this is not legal advice, just for reference if anyone at UA asks OP what happened.)

But, as a moral issue, I think OP went above and beyond. It's not his job to play internal auditor and second-guess after contacting the appropriate department and getting what, from OP's report, sounds like an unambiguous response. Especially at a time when United's award pricing is fully dynamic and I've seen tickets on the same route in the same class range from 62.5K to 650K miles.

VegasGambler

At what point does this become a post-purchase fare increase?

jsloan

The point at which the amount debited exceeds the amount UA presented originally.

I suspect OP’s receipt lists the full amount, not the reduced one.

joaozinho

Hey everyone... wanted to give you an update since it's been about 6 months. My flight was a success and the total amount debited was 20k miles. I continued to earn and burn miles on the account with no issue. Have another flight to Asia via mileage plus coming up soon. Anyways sometimes I guess one just gets lucky. I tried to tell United about it but I guess they didn't want to deal with it. Anyways, cheers everyone.