The overage was not refunded automatically. 48 hours after arrival, I emailed 1K Voice and the PlusPoints were back in my account a few hours later.

Again: the moral of the story here is to track your PlusPoints or they may disappear.

Change to confirmed pluspoint upgrade?
 

Dear flyers,
Wondering if anyone have experience changing a ticket with confirmed upgrade?
UA website mentions "You will not be able to cancel PlusPoints requests that have received upgrades". My understanding is that you cannot revert the upgrade on the same flight. But how about flight changes? (with or without travel waiver). Is UA going to refund the points or I will lose them for good?

Thanks!

With the exception of Skip the Waitlist requests, If you change the flight, the points are refunded. (You may need to follow up with UA). This includes same-day change, changes under a travel waiver, and changes where you pay a change fee.

The language quoted by OP is unbelievably poorly phrased. The rule is actually the opposite of what it appears to say.

It's awkward, to be sure. The actual rule is that you cannot remove a confirmed upgrade and stay on the flight you're already on -- you can't move from upgraded back to your original class of service. (And, for Skip the Waitlist, you can't make any voluntary changes at all).

When the rules were first published, it took me a couple of passes before I was certain I understood what they were trying to say. I can speak from experience, though -- I've changed a flight with a confirmed PlusPoints upgrade, and I got the points back. (I had to write in, because the refund didn't work properly, but I did get them back).

This was a subject of much discussion in the initial thread, and UA Insider confirmed it doesn't mean what it seems to say (i.e., you can cancel or change a flight after the upgrade has confirmed).

Thank you! Makes sense

Same experience just two days ago. I changed my ticket under the Coronavirus waiver. My friend had to call 1K line to re-apply request for my new flights. The PlusPoints were not returned properly.

I'm two for three at PlusPoints domestic upgrades so far in 2020, both in unlikely circumstances:

• SDCed to IAD-LAX, had the 1K phone rep waitlist my PlusPoints upgrade (which I thought wasn't possible less than 24 hours before departure?), and had the upgrade clear--into a Polaris seat--after boarding when somebody no-showed. Weirder still, UA has yet to take the 20 points out of my account, but I find it very hard to believe that I would have had a CPU clear on a hub-to-hub transcon.

• Did not clear on a CLE-DEN leg flown by a friend with silver status last week.

• Cleared DEN-BOS tomorrow for a friend with no status at all. He's going to appreciate it even more after spending almost three hours in a CR2 earlier that day!

Now allowed until the list goes to the gate.

where did you find that information?

It's on the website.

I'm running into lots of inconsistencies with PlusPoints, although largely in my favor. My last three international segments have had the points refunded at flight time even though the upgrade is confirmed. (I'd be ecstatic about this if it weren't for the fact that they refund as points expiring in 5 days.) There seems to be some conflict between the PlusPoints upgrades vs. some other upgrade list that an agent can use, I've also had the PlusPoints website workflow request points that don't show on the website but that the phone agent can see as waitlisted; it's all very confusing.

Were these all upgrades processed at the gate by the gate agent? Or were they done ahead of time?

-RM

The wiki states that if I only apply plus points the longer of two segments, and that it clears, I would have to apply more plus points to get the shorter flight upgraded as well. It seems though that it is only referring to Polaris flights. Is it different for Domestic only flights? If the upgrade was only applied to the longer of the two legs because I didn't want to waste the upgrade if only the shorter leg cleared, once the longer leg clears, can we retroactively apply the upgrade to the short leg as well? The flights are BOS-SFO / SFO-SAN.