IT Issue: Meal Choice and Preference
 

Hi All,

I tried search and couldn't find anything relevant. Mods feel free to adjust as needed.

I have been plagued with a seemingly phantom IT issue that I am not sure how to fix.

1) When flying domestic F with meal service, my meal choice is often deleted by the system and reset to nothing. I get an email notification of this saying "there has been an itinerary change and your meal choice has been canceled." There is no schedule/itinerary change. This happens 2-5+ times during the available times to select a meal. If I don't catch it in time right at T-24, often my meal choice is erased. This week I have domestic F flight Wed/Fri and so far I am up to 3x and 2x times choosing meal respectively.

Notably this has not happened to me on Polaris flights.

2) Years ago I was gluten free. At the time, I selected "gluten free meal" preference in my account. This was all related to stress in my life at the time and is no longer necessary for me (hasn't been for quite some time). This preference seems to be "stuck" to my account. Manual changing (and resaving) to no preference hasn't helped. My account seems to default to this old meal choice preference.

(Given the issue above), more than once, an FA has come to me to apologize for no gluten free meals on board (which I didn't actually pick...the first issue above erased my actual choice, and then this second issue inserted a gluten free meal choice as my "pick").

Ultimately, I would love to pick a meal choice once and be done with it. I have emailed 1K Voice about this and got no help.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how/who to reach out to about this problem to help fix?

Thanks

Wow, that sounds bad. I’ll wager a guess, the lingering gluten free stuff is causing the problem because UA doesn’t offer that domestically. I’d reach out to web support to get that bit cleaned up, maybe they need to complete re-set the profile.

I have had the same problem but only on flights booked through my company travel agent, where VLML is in my profile. Again this is a meal type that United does not offer.

Thanks Guys.

Outbound flight yesterday....at T- 23 hrs 59 min (or just after check in where I can't alter meal choice) I got the same "there's been a change to your itinerary and we have canceled your meal selection" email. That was the 5th time for the trip yesterday. No GF meal was inserted this time, though.

Thoughts on how to best escalate to web-support?

This is my favorite thread posted in quite some time. I’m really sorry I don’t have any answers or help for you on this but I just absolutely love that FT exists so that life’s absurdities can be exposed, discussed ad nauseam, and (hopefully) resolved. This is so Larry David and I’m here for it.

It might be just a matter of finding the right person willing to dig in and find the issue.


I used to have a problem years ago that was equally quirky: my applied GPUs wouldn't get deducted from my account, so when I showed up at the airport with a confirmed J seat, the check-in agent would notice that the upgrade wasn't actually 'paid' for, and downgraded the flight back to Economy.
This went on for so long, that I even requested -and was granted- an extension of the GPUs that I couldn't use because of this, when the new year rolled over.

Eventually, someone must have figured out what the issue was, and fixed it.

It is very much a first world problem....but I appreciate your enthusiasm 😁 🍻


Interesting. Thanks. I finally have some time on Monday to circle back on this. Will give 1K a call mid-morning. I do have some (old) acquaintances in UA Corporate (friends from 10 years ago) who I may try and reach out to as a plan B.

Will report back resolution here. I appreciate everyone's thoughts.

Resolution is to call in to 1K and have them do it manually for me over the phone 🤣

I was transferred between Mileage Plus and Mileage Plus Web Support. This bug I am having also prevents me from removing the Gluten Free option within the account settings myself (which they were pretty perplexed about).

I don't care about this that much to call in every single time (and don't think that's a good use of my or their time) but hey. I may try calling support one more time just to see if if I get a different answer. 🤷‍♂️

What's your point? Everything related to air travel is pretty much a first world problem by definition.