qbrain

They didn't want to ruin your baseball analogy, so they sent you home.

Sounds like a great extra 4 day vacation and a great read.

Javan69

Sounds like Hobo hit for the cycle. ^ You should tell that LAX TSA dude who's really god.

hobo13

Glad you asked. We did a combination of relaxing and seeing more of BA. Here's a recap. In general, we ate all 3 meals at the hotel unless noted.

Bump 1: Sunday night. Had room service, as instructed by front desk, as restaurant was closed for the day.
Monday: Checked out the roof-deck pool, lunch at the hotel (included), long walk down Calle Florida to Plaza San Martin.

Bump 2: Monday night
Returned to hotel. Tried to stream BSU-TCU football game (we're Mountain West fans), but the hotel internet is terrible, so it didn't work very well. Did some laundry in the tub! Ordered room service, since it worked the night before.
Tuesday: Slept in! (Wife doesn't get up so early on vacations!) Day at the pool where we met 'aspiring FT couple' who had also been bumped the night before. He had lurked on FT some, but both were keen to learn a lot about miles, status, bumps, hotel deals, award travel, etc. Had lunch with them as well. Got the call at 445pm.....

Bump 3: Tuesday night. Pre-emptively bumped via phone call at hotel. Order room service for a quick bite. Cabbed to Buquebus terminal to catch ferry to Colonia (Uruguay). Spent night in Colonia (on our dime)
Weds: Up early. Explored Colonia. Returned to BA on ferry. Lunch at hotel.

Bump 4: Weds night. Only 7 over. Had to wait until flight closed, but they needed us, and sent us back to the hotel. Ate dinner in the restaurant (oddly, *more* expensive than room service)
Thurs: Slept in! Train to Tigre to explore Delta region. Took a public boat up to Tres Bocas and walked around. Returned to hotel just in time for a shower and to catch our car to EZE.

Thurs night: On the VDB list, but not needed. We fly home.

SEA1K4EVR

Did you at least get decent E+ seats for the return flight?

Ripper3785

Not only did you score some sweet VDB, but it looks like you really made the most of your extra time in EZE! ^ ^ ^

hobo13

It's a very small price actually. At various points during the run, UA had C (and sometimes even Y!) seats for sale. The C seats were $5000. I'm not saying they sold one, but it's not out of the question. CAll the North American carriers were oversold during this period. Some nights, I don't think you could buy a seat to the US for any amount of money! So if you had a business meeting that you had to get too, you might just plop down $5k. And all United had to do to get that $5k was give me $600/$1200 of funny money, and a hotel! How many times would you want to play that game?

I would estimate the hotel was $100 per night to United. The rate on the internet was about $140 for those nights, and UA certainly was getting some discount. Standard cab to EZE is $25.

yevlesh2

Nicely done!

$4800 in vouchers + extra time in Buenos Aires on UA's dime sounds like a great combination.


Would be nice to do the same thing on a flight from Europe next time. If I am not mistaken, UA would have had to offer 800 Eur vouchers for a 24 hour bump

hobo13

My wife is also 1K! So yes, we're stocked on SWU's. The odds of getting them out of the EZE agents would be nearly zero, in my estimation. Remember, this is an outpost in the Land of United. (more on that later.)

Indeed. Saturday night was the hard limit for me, as that still puts us back to Denver on mid-Sunday morning. But in reality, I sort of wanted an extra day to recover, so we had set Friday night as our 'it's time to fly'. In other words, we really only missed 1 possible bump.

The irony is that my wife actually has a job. And a good one at that! But, at $600, tax-free, per day..... well, let's just say she found a new charge number for the week! In reality, we figured that with me starting on Monday with zero vacation time (gasp!), we might as well reset her vacation clock to near zero as well.

No, definitely not. Usually they issue some meal vouchers, typically good for $10-$15 either at the airport or at the hotel. It's enough to get something, but not all that much.

The experience in BA was very unlike my domestic bump experiences (and I've had a lot!) That was the initial impetus for this thread -- despite dozens of domestic bumps, I had never been bumped on a flight TO the US, and thus wasn't sure how it worked.

In BA, the situation is very unique. There literally are no hotels at or near the airport in EZE. Hence, the standard operating procedure is to escort you to one of the taxi places (I forget the name, but it's along the row where you come through arrivals). UA arranges a cab to the city for you, and also for the return. All pre-paid. The UA agent literally walks you down there and sets it all up. We felt like GSes much of the time. Then they fax the info to the hotel, so everything is ready when you get there.

At the hotel, you are supposed to get dinner at the restaurant. But our first bump occurred Sunday night and it was closed. The front desk told us to order room service. 'We'll just bill it to United' he said with a laugh! Room service was pretty reasonable at about 150 pesos for the two of us. We kept doing that the next 2 nights, thinking that was what we were supposed to do. But then the front desk tried to tell me it wasn't included, and although they relented, we decided to eat in the restaurant on the final night as we were apparently supposed to do. Well, it turns out that the restaurant is a rather gourmet type of place! Sort of one those 'food is art' type of places! It's entirely different menu than the room service, and costs more. We spent 232 pesos the night we ate there. So yea, United should just recommend room service, as it's cheaper!

Breakfast at the hotel is pretty good. It's a buffet type with eggs and sausage, and more types of pastry than I could count.

Lunch was what they called a 'Layover Menu' and seemed to be targeted at folks being put up by the airlines. It had a choice of two mains (steak, generally), and then dessert. And a beverage. We skipped it on the day we went to Tigre, but otherwise liked it a lot.

N1120A

Hobo - You are a bump taking god. You essentially paid to make both of you 1K next year, even without DEQM.

hobo13

Yes and no, and this is a sore spot.

With every bump, I would reiterate my desire for C seats. I was always told C is oversold. Then I would insist upon seats together in E+. But because they don't actually book you onto the next flight until after you leave the airport (see my post above on this), you can't actually pick your seats. The staff takes care of it, and generally does a good job.

Except, sometimes they are too smart for themselves. On Thurs, I logged into .bomb and saw that we had no seat assignments, but E+ was 1/3 empty. I took windows in successive rows, figuring we might switch with someone. But unbeknown to us, they had saved aisles in the middle section (with a middle seat blocked) for us. Apparently, they assumed that we wanted to be assigned seats together (logical) without having to trade. The only way to do this was in the middle section.

At check-in, they put us on the VDB list, and withheld our BP's. Yes, weird, I agree -- but remember, this is an outpost. I assumed we had the window seats that I had picked on-line. Only in the final minutes did they give us our BPs, in the center section! I was livid. I told them that I had selected windows, and that's what we had wanted. We've helped you out all week, and this is how you send us off??? Well, with the flight completely full, there's nothing they can do. They did ask the guy in the middle to move to one side (he was all too happy of course!), but that's it. I don't sleep so well without a wall to lean against -- heck, I barely sleep in Y at all. But by counting 4800 sheep, each with a $1 bill in their mouth, I eventually fell asleep.

Now as for C. If anyone ever gets rebooked in C/F off of a VDB in EZE please let me know. Seriously. I don't think it will ever happen. Here's why.

The station manager, and thus the staff, at EZE have this notion that a cabin is 'full' if there are as many or more people on the waistlist for upgrades as there are seats. In other words, someone wanting to upgrade might as well already be assigned a seat in the cabin. I knew soon after the start that we were never going to get C on the long-haul, so I backed-off to requesting F on IAD-DEN. For those who play the bump game, you know that it is pretty common to be rebooked in F domestically. At some stations, it's almost automatic. To be fair, I'm sure it's not policy, but I'm also not sure that it's against any policy either.

IAD-DEN for us would be a 767, so I figured this was a pretty easy request -- wrong! I was repeatedly told that F was full. Of course, I pulled out my laptop, and sure enough, it's F5! The station manager actually argued with me that it's against United policy to put anyone in F if there are people on the upgrade list. Let's just say we went back and forth on this -- me touting my repertoire of bumps, and he touting his 18 years of service to United! He absolutely told me that I was wrong, and acted as though rebooking us in F would be giving away the crown jewels! Sheesh! He said it can only be done if no one is on the upgrade list -- now how often is that going to happen?!? Wait till Q2 -- I can assure you that it will NEVER happen. So I'm sure he views C on EZE-IAD the same way -- he won't rebook VDB's into C as long as anyone is on the upgrade list. So unless C is going to go out with positive space, forget it. And if C has that much space, Y probably wasn't oversold to begin with. Hence, I predict that no one will ever get C/F as bump comp on EZE-IAD. They are only to happy to oversell Y, drastically, but forget about C.

Yes, we did eventually get F on the domestic leg, but only after an ordeal.

OK, I think I provided most of the details and filled in some gaps. Just a few other anecdotes to the story:

1. On one of the nights, we got a quick glance into the UA office / control room! They needed to book our hotel for us, and invited us to have a seat while they called it in. Very interesting, and a real treat for us United geeks!

2. On the last night (i.e. the night they did not need us), we were told that the offer would be $400 per person, take it or leave it. Their argument was that they would only need a few people at most. I tried to argue that $600 is the standard overnight VDB compensation, but got no where! 'Maybe domestically, but not internationally' Whatever. I'm sure we can debate this concept a lot, but at a minimum, it caught me by surprise. I'll probably lose my cred around here, but I was prepared to take it. Face it -- we had just killed the entire week, and this was just going to consume weekend days, so no lost work. In the end, it didn't matter. And no, I don't think that any of us were going to negotiate that to $600. I've heard that the Argentinian culture doesn't really favor negotiation, and that certainly holds true at EZE. They generally made a fair offer to begin with (and treated us like gold, for the most part), but I never managed to get anything extra.

3. While this may not exceed the quantity of bumps (4) from Feb 2009, chronicled here, having my wife along for this one not only gives that x2 multiplier on the loot, but also makes it a lot more fun in the process! And being 'stuck' in BA sure beats BOS!

4. Did I mention that this whole thing was done on a Saver Award ticket? In fact, 8 of the VDB's on Tues (who then stayed to Weds) were ALL on award tickets! Big ^ to United for making awards available at busy times of year.

Darby

^ FT Hall of Fame. First ballot.

northsideguy

+1
Hobo13 has my vote! Long live the Bump King!

Easy Victor

I'm not even into the bump thing, but this is a great read! Congrats!

Flying Machine

Hobo, I have flown LAX-IAD-EZE 6 times in the last year to 15 months or so. I just came across this thread. You have the golden touch! I read through the whole thread, I would have never thought that they would handle you like they did ( was great to hear that you were treated like the GS guys and gals ). You are the king..

MatthewLAX

Allow me to add my congrats. Nicely done.

Next time, though, insist on a C-seat. You can do it!

My last two (domestic) bumps have resulted in L --> F bookings (one on a three-cabin plane). I suspect the EZE station manager could have easily booked you into C or even F with no negative ramifications.

From your description above, it appears he is not well-versed on the fine points of VDBs.