I live in DEN, and will just use them to get me to SFO. After that, it’s ANA/SIA all the way. I’m absolutely not locked in to using them for long haul business.

United was so sub-par in 2021 (they actually had gas station burritos as the only food option in the SFO lounge for Polaris) that this is exactly what I did. I took UAL domestically, and flew Asian carriers for the long haul stuff as everything about international United was embarrassingly bad at that time.

So I have no problem going back to that way of going back and forth from Asia.

I called into the MP Service Center this morning requesting a review. The L1 agent straightaway offered me the 18K in 120 days challenge. I said I would like a review first considering that I spent more than what the challenge requires on an annualized basis, last year. He then escalated the call to a supervisor who said that they are inundated with requests from irate GS members who were not reinvited and corporate is reviewing and will communicate a decision by the end of January before current status runs out. If you haven't called in to request a review, might be worth doing so just to let United know that the group of loyal, unhappy customers is large and growing.

In today's world, that is just too slow. While many will not notice until they don't have GS status, this appears to have created a grass roots communication wild fire. This is UA's DL moment and time is of the essence to address, the first rule of crisis management. Waiting another two weeks to address is tooooooooooo late, the damage will have been done even if corrected. And don't leave it to front line employee's to manage in the meantime..

Squeaky wheels might get the GreaSe....

I'm sorry, and with all due respect, I think this is pretty hyperbolic. As of the moment I'm writing this, ~30% of the posts in this thread are literally from 10 (yes, 10) posters (~32% if you expand to the top 11 posters) whom are mostly saying the same thing over and over. Furthermore, some of the GS folks participating in the thread simply purchased GS through Pass Plus and aren't even impacted. I'd hardly classify that as a "wildfire" (or a crisis). I've seen literally no mention of this outside FT (or even this thread).

To quote another poster in this thread:
I'm sorry, but there is literally no way this situation is even roughly on the same scale as the Delta fiasco (and for the record, I'm not a DL flyer so I don't have a dog in that fight); it's not even within an order of magnitude of that.

Regards

But there are several people on this thread who are new to FT and most likely searched around online first before finding this site. I suspect this situation has very long legs, these are people who spend quite a bit on travel and if they felt compelled enough to create an account to express their displeasure here I'm sure they're also willing to voice their opinion elsewhere.

I have been GS since merger with Continental. I am a 3MM. I am self-employed. No coprporate travel department.

My recent history:

2020 - GS thanks to flying a lot in 2019
2021 - GS thanks to UA extending status (I flew only 1/1/20-3/15/20)
2022 - GS thanks to UA extending status
2023 - not invited back to GS (about 33,000 UA PQP in 2022). Asked for a challenge and easily met it. Flew about 65,000 UA PQP in 2023 (76,770 total PQP)
2024 - not invited back to GS and received notice "we are pleased to welcome you to Premier 1K status"

Now as a 3MM I am permanent 1K, so being welcomed to 1K felt silly.

I liked being GS because of irrops, decent chance at upgrades, and upgrades on award tiickets, in that order. I can pay for the United Club but I find irrops handling invaluable. I fly over 100,000 air miles annually, mostly a lot of domestic trips in coach, but 4 or more high-priced Polaris tickets each year, which has usually taken me to the GS threshold, until this year.

We shall see... we shall see.

There are really only two scenarios here:
1) This was simply a "system" mistake or
2) It's a fundamental, planned change to the program.

If #1, it will be corrected and almost assuredly blow over, life will go on. I do not agree with WineCountryUA that somehow waiting two more weeks will do "fatal" damage. I mean where are these folks going to go? AA? Delta? Some of the scorned AA CKs were trying to figure out how to switch to Pass Plus to get UA GS.

If #2, then sure, it will likely get picked up by a blog or two (probably by Gary Leff if anyone) but it will never have the legs that the DL story had, given it's impact on even non-status folks access Skyclubs. The scope and scale of who was impacted by the DL situation was orders of magnitude greater than this situation. It even had the potential to harm their credit card partner (Amex). That was a whole, whole different level of scope than this. It just was. Many of the "bloggers" that wrote about DL, were directly impacted by it (e.g. either they had status or used DL Skyclubs). Almost none (or very few) of the bloggers have GS status, they just won't care that much. Wishing it to be the same situation doesn't actually make it so.

Regards

I finally found my Welcome to GS email (with video that publishes your spend).

My PQP was a lot higher due to $13,500 in card spend and also 2 x NH J flights. DEN based. 1st year as GS.

Just my 2 cents in terms of criteria for NEW qualification.
- I think total PQP has a weight and that CC spend is going to become (or has become part of the equation)
- I think the per segment $ number matters
- I think rolling spend for new members matters (multi-year)
- I think which HUB makes a difference


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...a808329a89.png

in United’s shoes I could see that participants in corporate discount programs are already costing money, so why give more benefits if it’s a captive program? The benefits are going to the company rather than the enployee, but that’s a labor/morale issue.

I think once the tantrums wear off there will be a regression to actual rational self interest. Many will flying UA so much to stretch to GS but many will return because the routes make sense. And anybody flying on international business class tickets gets a miles bonanza that’s unmatched by foreign carriers. Every trip is 50-150k miles. All those who claim they will switch to foreign carriers are walking away from that. And those in UA Hubs who switch to AA or Delta will be in for a rude surprise when irrops arise. Time to wait line for a voucher for a crappy hotel and crappier meal.

The trouble and strife requalified with about 56k but almost all intl business class with no corporate discount program. Even if she gets demoted in a future year we will probably stick with UA, but will consider AA. Not delta, their miles seem almost useless.

American exec platinum
 

For you very big spenders who lost GS on United, keep in mind that the American Airlines’ earning years ends Feb 28th. It’s an opportunity to get some sort of status on American rapidly by giving American all your spending over the next 6 weeks or so.

So I’ve heard the same from travel director at a very large consulting firm this week - the corporate contract for United provides for rebates at the end of each quarter, and at the end of year the amenities (GS, 1K, Gold upgrades; UC passes) are allocated for the next year. She explained they have received a very large allocation of amenities for next year - so effectively someone on a large corporate discount contract that wasn’t renewed could be provided the GS status through their central corporate travel management team.

For high spenders here I am hoping that this is a glitch, but it does seem as st530 pointed out that those booking via a direct channel with United were evaluated as normal.

In the congratulations email United sent out this week, there is a personalized video link attached. In the video they call out “Your United spend” which exactly matched my own tracker - would be interesting to see for others if there was any discrepancy. This is the first time I’ve ever had my “UA metal” number played back to me from the company.

I don't know why people keep insisting that GS upgrading others with PPs is "lost $ to UA" -- it's not. It's giving the GS designee higher priority that will either displace a lower priority upgrade or put the designee in a seat that would otherwise go out empty. In neither scenario is UA losing a penny. You are certainly right though about unhappy 1Ks. :)

I agree this is not the same as DL but your are understating the impact from the 10 posters, which include the FedEx pilots and two companies each with hundreds of affected employees. There are undoubtedly thousands more if in fact UA has axed all corporate discount participants wholescale.

Are you implying your company that (assuming they each did 100k+ which seems to be the outrage threshold where we can't believe it happened in this thread) had 80+ former GS with huge numbers that all lost it? You've communicated to them all about this? That just seems....like it could only be an error on UA's part and no way they would have risked/done this intentionally.

There are pros and cons to this argument (including the fact that UA is still willing to given them benefits up to 1K), but I think the big fail on UA's part is not announcing the change ahead of time like it has done with all other significant changes to MP. These (former?) GS had the rug pulled out from under them after they'd already spent all of 2023 spending lots of $ on UA tickets.

While it is true that GS has no published criteria, all UA had to do with say something like "Starting in 2023, MileagePlus members who earn miles through a corporate discount program will only be eligible to obtain up to 1K status."