iluv2fly

I was in the GS room at ORD a few days ago. I was talking about some VDB vouchers I had and the agent said that they will no longer be able to ticket anything for us once SHARES is implemented.

kenn0223

Spoke with a very friendly Service Director at DEN late last week about the transition to SHARES in early March. While much of the information she shared about her on-going training has already been discussed here a new bit came out that I hadn't heard yet and was hoping a resident UA staffer could comment.

She said that SHARES (or whatever the baggage subsystem is called) does not include any real-time bag tracking component and that they will stop scanning bags durring aircraft loading, unloading, and a bag-belt delivery when UA transitions to SHARES. As many of you know, UA is somewhat unique in that they scan a bag several times throughout the journey and maintain that scan history (similar to FedEx). This history and help resolve lost bag issues much more quickly and I imagine saves both UA and customers with displaced bags a lot of time and money. I think Delta has implemented the process (and even allows customers to follow along with their iPhones) but CO has not and the new UA will not.

My hope is that legacy UA agents and management will be able to attest to the significant inefficiencies once SHARES rolls out and over the years they'll get patched back to PMUA standards.

entropy

not really surprising, I guess we should just add it to the long list of stuff that SHARES can't do/or can't do easily that will end up costing UA far more money than had they paid for Apollo.

mduell

With the information available from United, is there any reason to believe otherwise?

They've announced they're going with SHARES for the PSS and CO's other web infrastructure for eCommerce.

The default assumption should be no change; we'll be going ahead with the same as the legacy system. Some systems (million miler and elite qualification come to mind) have had policy changes announced.

One positive change under this assumption will be 24h SDC system-wide (at least domestic) rather than the current 3h/24h hodge-podge.

UA-NYC

I did a SDC on CO MEX-EWR last month, so there's at least some int'l functionality to it (unclear about longhaul int'l routes)

star_world

Says who? This entire thread started with baseless speculation and has continued that way. Take your point about SDC - this is a policy that existed in PMCO - it's nothing to do with SHARES or any other reservations system. How can you, or anyone else arrive at the assumption that this PMCO policy will be carried over to the new airline? Sure I'd love if it did, but it doesn't just happen by default because of the use of some PMCO systems.

The intent of the OP is clear - raise a bunch of points that neither he, nor anyone else can confirm or deny at this stage and phrase it as a helpful "warning" to PMUA FF members. Incredibly misleading at best - in my view it is downright deceptive. We simply do not know what policies will be in place going forward.

This was always possible on PMCO since SDC was made available. Longhaul routes too.

uastarflyer

I have a couple of customer service vouchers (appreciation) I would like to use in Q2 or Q3 - does your statement mean I'd need to ticket by mail (Detroit IIRC)?

kenn0223

Ya, I thought about posting there but didn't want this discussion to get lost in a more general discussion (since many of the items on that list have discussion elsewhere).

You are right it should be added to the list.

Mods feel free to move if that's better for the forum.

uastarflyer

Agree with you completely on the benefits of bag tracking, not to mention some peace of mind knowing the bag went to DEN instead of ORD v. just being told "I don't know, we'll let you know when we find it".

Big thumbs down (and another finger pointed up) to SMI/J and his cronies/hacks for this reduction.

n198ua

I don't get it - this is all bad, yes? So why is the new UA using SHARES instead of the legacy UA system already in place? Its got to be something more than "its cheaper" . . .

channa

Added functionality improvements and baggage sections.

channa

Yowza -- added this to the list. Thanks for pointing this out.

I've always used the real-time baggage scanning to my benefit on both UA and DL. When I am forced to reroute (e.g., IRROPS), it's always reassuring to ask where my bag is.

For example, I checked a bag MIA-IAD-SFO a couple months ago, and I was auto-rebooked on a much later IAD-SFO when IAD-SFO cancelled. I switched to a better IAD-LAX-SFO, and when I landed, the 1K desk was able to tell me exactly what flight my bag travelled on (not with me, but beat me), so I could go down there and find it with certainty.

Similarly, on a recent DCA-JFK-SFO on DL, we took a delay DCA-JFK and barely made the connection. On arrival at SFO, I asked DL if my bag made it, and they verified it was scanned as loaded on the plane, so I knew to wait around for the carousel to start running.

I'm going to miss this functionality if we lose it.

Baze

Before everybody gets too upset, even the OP was asking for someone in CO to verify the information. This is only one person who talked to a Service Director at DEN. Nothing is verified. If does turn out to be correct is a huge step back and down but I would like it to be confirmed before getting all upset about it. And what is CO lost luggage rate compared to UA's. If it is statistically the same as UA's then what's the big deal. If it is really worse than UA and this information is correct then it is a big deal and should be looked at. But lets not jump to conclusions without facts.

UA-NYC

Funny, all the PMUA flyers seem to have found it helpful, as many aren't quite as experienced as channa, myself, and a few others in the ways of CO (I've done 50K BIS in the past 18 months and now have a decent feel for the airline). You're only going to see more bewildered threads show up in the months ahead, so any related "guides" are quite enlightening to many.

"Policies" can go off in a number of different directions - we've seen many policy changes so far, too many to name. Those aren't too difficult to change (enforcement is another story).

"Systems" though seem to be pretty fixed for the near future - do you have any indication otherwise? It's silly to think that all these systems issues are going to change in the short term. Fact is, SHARES and it's seemingly less robust nature vs. UA's systems seem to be a downgrade overall, and until we're told otherwise, we're stuck with it.

It might be helpful to cite specific areas from the original post that you believe likely won't stay the same going forward.

channa

The mishandle rates are not too far off (UA is slightly better than CO at the moment). The issue is more of a lack of information and certainty. If they're guessing and hoping your bag is on this flight vs. knowing for sure is the issue.

It's nice to know your bag didn't make it and you can file the report and not wait around for 45 minutes for the whole plane to dump its load of bags.