Agree, don't they want all the PP's up front even if waitlisted? That is my understanding, so until she gets the additional needed PPs she can't waitlist Polaris.

There is a interesting present twist, if you have X available PlusPoints, you can request Y > X waitlists.

UA does explicitly state
"You must have enough PlusPoints in your available balance to cover the price of an upgrade request.", so the OP's friend will not be able to request Polaris waitlist today without enough "available PlusPoints". This appears to mean a single specific request but not accumulative requests.

but then states
"If your available balance ever goes below the price of an individual request that hasn’t been upgraded, that request will be skipped until your available balance can cover the cost of the upgrade.",
and
"If your PlusPoints balance falls below the amount needed for any requests you’ve made, those requests will be ‘skipped’ until you get enough PlusPoints, and then your original request will be reinstated."

So if already requested when you have sufficient available, you can get to a point where you have insufficient PlusPoints to clear a request.

Yes, the intention of being able to waitlist more than you have is that you can waitlist multiple options and whatever gets availability first gets the upgrade. It is not possible to add yourself to waitlist for a cabin if you already don't already have PPs.

Example: if I have 40 PPs, and 3 different flights in an E fare (40 PP to upgrade) and 1 flight in a K fare (80 PP to upgrade). I can waitlist all 3 of my E-class flights, as I have enough individually for each of those flights if it were to clear. As soon as any of those the 40 PPs are deducted and the remaining E fare flights are skipped should an upgrade become available (unless I get additional pluspoints). At my current balance of 40 PP, at no point can I even waitlist the K fare flight to Polaris since I don't have the points to clear it.

There is no policy that allows what is being requested. The system only allows a single upgrade certificate for a line-of-flight to exist at a time (which is why they take the full amount as soon as any part clears) so you need to request what you actually want so it generates the request properly. Beyond that the PlusPoint deductions/booking code changes to process the upgrade are all handled by automation once the request is in and aren't capable of modifying the existing request, only cancelling and putting a new one in. Like all things automated, there is a manual work-around to do what is being requested, but they are encouraged, especially with the upgrade system, to let it work as intended and only manually override it on an exception basis. So would need to rely on 1) getting an agent to grant an exception to potentially override the automation to maintain the previous upgrade and 2) having the capability to either do it themselves or get a support person who will allow them to carry out the request.

Basically what needs to happen to add on the PZ waitlist after RN has cleared when only RN was requested.
1) The existing request needs to be cancelled out, convert the upgraded segment back to original booking code (need an agent who can overbook it if original booking code isn't available anymore), and the the points redeposited.
2) A new upgrade request needs to be put in, waitlisting for both RN and PZ at the amount of points required for PZ.
Those steps are almost entirely processed by the automated systems, and up to this point everything is allowed by policy but two different possibilities exist at this point.

No policy exception required: if RN>0 and no one else is ahead on the waitlist for RN: system will automatically reconfirm it into RN and deduct the new certificate for the higher amount of points keeping the PZ waitlist intact.

Exception required: The more likely case RN=0 and/or someone else is ahead on the RN waitlist now. The RN space needs to be overbooked (by an agent who has this capability) to reconfirm the previously upgraded space you held. Since they manually converted the booking code instead of the upgrade system processing it, the pluspoints don't automatically get deducted. They have to now attempt to manually trigger the automated system to recognize an upgrade occurred and deduct the new amount of pluspoints. When that inevitably doesn't work (because UA IT) since it will see a duplicate request for the LOF, they will need to actually manually deduct the points from the account. Which means hopefully they do it properly assign it to the LOF so the system recognizes the upgrade was paid for (else you risk getting skipped going to PZ for not being able to have upgrade paid for). Separately, if they manually pulled the points and the upgrade never clears, the difference in points won't be automatically redeposited and will require a call to MPSC to get them redeposited

PlusPoints upgrade order question:

I was under the impression that PlusPoints upgrades sit at the top of the WL over a non-PP/non-upgrade instrument GS. But now I seem to see otherwise.

Does a GS sit atop the upgrade list, no matter what? Over a 1K with PP?

GS CPUs clear into PN. They will be ahead of a 1K on PlusPoints. So will a GS/1K on a Y/B/M instant-upgrade fare, for the same reason.

These two things only apply to CPU-eligible flights, however.

The simple answer is PN > PZ. 1K cannot touch PN space unless it is YBM fare before T-24. Within T-24, 1K with YBM may be cleared to PZ. We are talking about CPU-eligible routes here.

And in addition to the two repliers above me....a GS and any GS sponsored PP upgrades sit above 1K with PP from any cabin on non-CPU routes. So a GS-sponsored PP non-elite sitting on coach on an SFO-FRA flight will be above any 1K already purchased/sitting in PremPlus.

-RM

I've got a question related to PlusPoints when used with SDC or 'free flight change'...I'm currently booked on a TATL flight on Saturday morning. I'm looking at flight options on Friday instead, and there seems to be quite a bit of availability (looking at the number of booked seats on the upgrade lists) for a few of the late afternoon flights on Friday. Some of the flights have a dozen or more seats available, and nobody on the upgrade list (as of now...I know that can change later). What I'm wondering is, is it possible to SDC to the flight on Friday afternoon, and then do a free flight change (to select economy instead of business class) and then apply some PlusPoints to secure an upgrade? I'm almost positive that an upgrade would go through (I'd be sure to check the upgrade list again before making any changes), and it would be a nice way to get back some $$ while using some PlusPoints, which will probably go unused otherwise. Thoughts?

If your target flight is within 24 hours of your originally booked flight, you can do SDC and then apply Pluspoints for upgrade.
What I do not understand is the last sentence about getting back some $$. So, I guess that you are in business cabin for Saturday because of buy-up. If you do SDC, you will lose the buy-up money that you paid earlier. Please clarify.

Sorry for the confusion...I'm booked in business. It wasn't a buyup. I was looking at flight options for Saturday, and I can use the 'Change Flight' option to change to a few different flights, all with a $0 change fee to stay in business, or I can select Economy and I'll get a partial refund back to my card. I was thinking I could switch to Economy, and then use PP to upgrade again...no?

Yes, you can certainly do that. However, I don't see how SDC, in particular, helps you with that scenario. You want to do a regular change.

Unless the business class fare you're on now is refundable, you wouldn't get a refund to your card, but you should get future flight credit.

Right now when I look at flight change, there's a price increase to switch to certain flights on Friday in business class. I had just assumed, incorrectly maybe, that using SDC on Friday (when I'm within 24 hrs of my original flight), that I'd be able to switch to the flight on Friday instead. Of course, that relies on my fare class (Z) being available.
I've done a couple flight changes within in the past couple days for flights that I have coming up in Jan and Feb. I did a price search and saw that the flight prices had gone down on other flights that still worked for my schedule, so I used the change flight option to select those new flights. When I've gone through the checkout process, it's said each time that I would get a credit back to the credit card I used (and even listed out the last 4 digits). I have yet to see those credits appear, but it's only been 1-2 days, and I'm guessing they just haven't processed those credits yet), and there's no new activity in my Future Flight Credit info either. One of the flight options was ~$400 cheaper, so I'm really hoping it goes through!

But you want to change to an economy flight. Changing to a business class flight in between doesn't gain you anything.

If it's saying you're getting a refund back to your card, you probably are -- but that sounds like you were on refundable fares. If you try the same thing on a nonrefundable fare, you get a flight credit.

I was thinking that there must be some sort of surchage/fee (I know, I know, there are no fees) for using the Change Flight option to switch to another date, because I've tried a couple days before/after, and each of those dates have price increases to switch to those dates instead of my current date. Is it just that I've actually bought the cheapest flight for the surrounding dates?
Is there a way to find out if I have a refundable fare? I always book my own flight, and I've never intentionally selected refundable. In fact, I don't know if I've seen that option for business fares, only for economy. Maybe I'm just missing something?

Well, it's more nuanced than that. When you do a regular change, it recalculates the fare based upon fares that are valid today, including advance purchase rules. SDC ignores those... if you stay in the same fare class. If you change fare classes, it'll compute a fare difference again.

So, if you were going to get a fare difference refund / FFC during SDC, I'd expect that you'd get one with the regular change flights tool also. But it's entirely possible that SDC might charge you more to move to economy than to stay in business. (I guess it's somewhat possible that SDC is using historical fares and ignoring advance purchase requirements in cases when it shouldn't, but I've never seen that).

It'll be in the endorsements in your receipt -- either REFUNDABLE or NONREF should be included.