bairn7

Hi

As the thread title states, I'm having major issues trying to use my travel credit with United. Granted, I have had to change my travel plans many times in the past couple of years. I thought I had found a resolution a couple of weeks ago but, sadly, that didn't work.

My issue is that I find a flight I would like to purchase on the United website. The website doesn't allow me to use my credit. I then have to search for my credit and try to purchase a flight through a link provided by the credit. When I do so, the flights freely available on the website are not available and the general costs are at least $500 more than the cost of the same flight when purchasing in cash. When I contact United chat, they concede that the flights are available when purchasing in cash, but are not available to me, "because you are rebooking". ...? My current travel credit has no obvious rebooking fee. But I don't know how to check this for sure.

My $1K flight credit is becoming almost useless due to the cost of my flight when 'rebooking' and using my flight credit! I can almost book the flight in cash for the same extra cost! Can anyone please shed light as to why my $1K has pretty much been lost?

WineCountryUA

Is this travel credit from a wholly unflown itin or did your fly some segments but cancelled the rest of the trip? The two are handled very differently.

More description of the original travel that generated the credit would help.

Kacee

It sounds like your credit consists of the return portion of a roundtrip ticket. If so, that credit is subject to the original ticket's fare rules, which can make it nearly impossible to use. We lost two of those, at around $750 each, last month because there was basically no way to economically use the return portion of our TATL RT in P.

bairn7

Thanks both. Is there any way to check from my booked ticket what the charges are? There have been many bookings and it would be horrendous to try to tie things back to the original booking (which was one booking).

The agent will only tell me that the cost is calculated by the 'rates department', but they will not give me further details as to how the cost is calculated.

To confirm, no flights have been taken. It started as a COVID cancellation that I have rebooked a few times, but have had to cancel. Sadly, I had grown complacent at United Chat who have ultimately always got me the flight I wanted, in spite of initial protests that the flight wasn't available.

Kacee

If it's a fully unused ticket, originating in the US, I'm not sure why there would be any restrictions on it. It may just be an agent competency issue. I would try calling to rebook rather than using chat.

bairn7

It is a ticket originating in the US, but that was cancelled. Now it is originating in Canada. Does that change things?

I keep asking for a plain english explanation from United why my travel credit cannot be used against a flight feely available on the website but they just keep referring back to their 'rates department'. If I've lost the $1K then I will suck it up and never use United again. But I need to at least know that it is a correct assessment. So frustrating!

I tried to upload my chat with United but apparently pdf's aren't accepted!













Sorry for the rant! All I want is a United representative to say "The website states that the flight you want is $1K, but the cost to you is $1.6K because of x, y and z, as can be referred to in your previous flight bookings". Am I the dick here!?

jsloan

Probably. Currency conversion issues get extremely complicated. UA likely isn't interested in letting customers use tickets for ForEx arbitrage, so I wonder if you've been locked into the USDCAD rate from the time you converted the ticket into CAD. Also, any partner segments involved? That can potentially cause issues, even though it shouldn't.

There is a near-zero chance you'll ever get that explanation from a front-line agent. Only the agents at the rate desk are going to have the skills to be able to answer that, and, as a rule, they don't interact with customers directly.

If your desired travel is far enough into the future, you could file a DOT complaint. That's another way to get a more competent agent to look at the record, but it's likely to take 2-3 months to get a resolution. If you don't want to go that route, see if you can get them to convert the amount to an ETC, which you would then be able to use on the website directly. It's not really within policy, but they may be willing to bend a rule for you given what a mess the current situation seems to be. Alternatively, you could try booking the cheapest ticket you can find, which should unlock the rest of it as a flight credit, but I can't promise what the currency would be.

If any of the coupons had been used, then they'd be correct -- your fare would have to be calculated in the context of the original ticket. Since none of them have been used, that should not be the case.

The only other thing I can think of is that you can't use credit from a Basic Economy ticket to purchase a non-Basic Economy fare, or vice versa. So if the fare you're looking at, but can't buy, is BE, that could be why you can't buy it.

You're underestimating the complexity of the matter. You've amended your contract with United a number of times, and it's just beyond the limited training that the call center reps get to be able to trace that back and give you an answer. Mostly what they do is enter commands into their computer and read back what it says.

Lux Flyer

Stop using chat and call. You’re getting overseas agents who are doing this some weird way. Your ticket is fully unused so all they need is the new fare quote and its exchangeable.

It has fare breaks in Mexico City and Bogota, segments 1-2 in V,, 3-6 in T

YVR-MEX VNA0A9ES
MEX-BOG TZOB2BR9
BOG-YVR TNA6D0EN

edit to add: look again at the flights they copied/pasted for you in chat. They were faring through Bogota on the outbound 06May and not Mexico City which is why they are getting a different construction.

edit again: next time you TALK to somebody, phrase it as multicity. They’re probably searching YVR-MDE and aren’t being given the option through MEX since EZR (reservations software) uses a different flight search/booking engine then United.Com. Overseas agents won’t generally do a point by point construction (even though its allowed since .com is offering those flights and the fare) so work around that by making them multi city it and walking them theough indvidual flights you want.
You want YVR-MEX on 05 May (select those flights)
Then MEX-MDE on 06 May (select that flight)
Then MDE-BOG on 12May (select that flight)
Then BOG-YVR on 13 May (select those flights)

uanj

I have been running into the exact opposite issue as I try to work through my travel credits. I have one remaining fully unused domestic ticket and have been told this year that I have to follow the original ticket restrictions and it cannot be used on an international ticket. A second time I was told that the issuing currencies must match so the originating country must be the same. I'll be dipped if I can find these restrictions anywhere in writing on the original ticket. And note that last year I was able to use travel credits under exactly similar circumstances.

Eventually I will use them up before they expire this year but UA has made it very time consuming. I cannot find these restrictions anywhere in the original ticket information. I will never again accept a travel credit from United if it can be avoided. When I accepted them I was told the credit was valid on any United flights, but clearly they are not honoring this.

Is it an option to fly from SEA?

My own personal view is that what United is doing is at least unethical- saying credits can be used on any United flight but then not allowing exactly that. Don't know if it is illegal or not.

I feel your pain, though. AC was horrible with cancelling and forcing rebooking for 2 days later at 4 times the cost during the pandemic. I was quite satisfied with UA until these last two months when I have been trying to clear up these old credits.

Lux Flyer

Bad agents are the issue, not the travel credits. The credits can be used on any ticket United can/will sell (not just UA flights). No such restriction on domestic vs international assuming it is truly fully unused and not BE (even then it would be issues surrounding into valid fares, not international/domestic per se). The currency part is correct since the existing ticket needs to be exchanged for a ticket of the same currency, but that is done by faring from the same point-of-sale (which can sometimes cause pricing differences if the fare you wer seeing online/looking at isn’t valid from that point of sale, but not outright ticketing failure). As long as it is a currency that United reservations handles, they can do it. And As far as I know for ticket exchanges worst case you use a US based card that gets charged in foreign currency and pay whatever your cards exchange rate/foreign transaction fee is.

edit: they can manually force the point of sale so it fares in the same currency regardless of originating country. Though I’m confused why they’re saying that since the system should automatically recognize the original point of sale and price it accordingly. Did they even try pricing it??!?

Sounds like a bad agent. UA’s policies for ticketing is fares are constructed based on NUCs (which they’re then filed in the currency of the originating country) and then converted to the point of sale currency. Tickets are issued based on the currency of the point of sale which is determined by the CC billing address.

uanj

Tickets priced and issued with no problem other than the two remaining credits (completely unused tickets, not BE) which they won’t apply. I generally combine my domestic and international travel so I don’t buy many domestic only tickets.

DreamHigh

Feed them the itinerary first. Once they confirm the flights, dates, and price, tell them that you would like to pay using your credit. Might work out better rather than them trying to piece it as a rebooking

Dublin_rfk

Stop using chat. If you get an answer you don't like or trust. HUCA

jsloan

That makes intuitive sense and will likely fail miserably. Credit from an unused ticket isn't really "credit" at all -- it's the unused airline ticket. This makes more sense if you remember that an e-ticket is an electronic record of something that used to be physically manifested on paper. If you were trying to exchange a paper ticket, it would make sense that you'd have to bring it to the ticketing office and hand it to them in order to get the new ticket printed; this is no different except that it's all electronic. So, by trying to "apply your credit," what you're really doing is telling the agent you want to look into another reservation, disconnect the ticket from it, and attach it into your new one. That's a violation of UA policy; it's possible, but it tends to make the audit trail a lot more difficult later if any further changes need to be made. Any agent who could do this successfully wouldn't have any problems constructing the itinerary properly in the first place.

Based on Lux Flyer's analysis -- and I'll be the first to admit, I did not read the five pages of chat -- the true underlying problem is that the ticket wasn't being fared correctly. Airfare is incredibly complex (for the computer scientists in the audience -- it's been proven NP-hard) and the pricing engine doesn't always get the best result. The procedure listed -- calling out the flights using multi-city -- is the most likely to get the desired price.

Those of us who have tried to take maximal advantage of sale fares can attest: just because a fare theoretically applies to a set of flights doesn't mean you'll find anyone who will sell it to you. I have a ticket coming up this summer from an AC fare sale. There were routings that would have given me more PQP, had valid inventory, and met the fare rules -- and I couldn't find anyone who would sell them to me. I ultimately had to purchase through Cheapo-Air, which I would never normally do, because they were the only OTA who could even come close to the routing I wanted at the correct price, and the fare expired that day so I didn't want to take the time to try to find an offline travel agent who could ticket it.

So, I see no malice here -- just a really complicated fare construction that's being missed by UA during rebooking.

Kacee

Personally, I wouldn't use chat for anything more complicated than a very straightforward change or rebooking. In fact, I don't use chat, because UA's IT will generally allow me to make those changes on the app or website. If it's too complex for the app or website, it's probably too complex for chat.