Does repricing on united.com really work?
 

I recently bought tickets for an itinerary, and I rechecked the price within 24 hours and found the same exact flights to be about $30 less. However, when I tried the reprice feature on united.com that many people have been successful with, it came back and said that I had the best value for the itinerary. Fortunately, I was within the 24 hour period and was able to refund it, and then purchase it again. Are there people out there who have had success with this? Are there certain fare rules (upfaring vs. downfaring) that I have to be looking at for this to feature to be valid?

Also, as a side note, does anyone have any experience with refaring online if your itinerary contains a UA flight # but US metal?

Thanks in advance.

i've called under this exact situation both to res and u.com support and in both cases, they re-fared the tix while on the phone. have a printed copy of the on-line re-price/new fare handy as i did have to fax it in on one occasion. the other option is where you are within the 24 hr window, you can always book the new ticket and cancel the old one (w/out penalty) and then call res to get your seats back.

In my experience, refaring the ticket can impose the $100 change charge.

i have had similar problems. on two occasions i have checked the fares online and called the reservations line who refared my itinerary no problems.

I've used the feature once and it works. Just be forewarned that if you are upgraded on a segment that you will lose the upgrade! If you are upgraded and need to refare due to a price drop, I would recommend going through a United agent. They seem to be able to refare without losing upgraded seats. Just a word to the wise as I know some of you might have upgrades confirmed on what have generally been difficult routes to upgrade.

and to add that if it's a "price drop", be aware that you may save some $$ but also drop into a lower fare bucket (s,t or l) which may/may not be eligible for certain promos (i.e. "l" is not eligble for the rtw promo)

I refared a flight about 1 1/2 months ago and am due a 140.00 refund. I've called and emailed UAL several times to be told that they don't have any record of me BUYING the original ticket and I should have my travel agent write them. Um, I bought the ticket on UAL.com and even have the flight upgraded to Business. I've spent a half hour on hold on my cell phone with United and still have no resolution. I even have the email that UAL sent showing the repriced reservation. So yeah, in theory it works, but they're holding my money hostage, it appears.

I'm 0 for 12 so far with the repricing function on Ua.com.. always tells me that I bought the best fare (makes me feel good !!).

I tried checking the prices on all my booked tickets (all done on united.com), but all but one came back with the message that I can't change that ticket online so I couldn't get to the screen that lets you check the price. Anyone else have this problem?

There are a variety of possible reasons:

1) If there has been a schedule change and your ticket has not been validated, you can't make an online change. Solution is to call UA to validate, then you can make change online.

2) Perhaps your ticket originates outside the US. I have found that those tickets don't allow online changes.

3) Have you already changed your tickets over the phone a couple of times? After three changes, the auto system won't work.

I've had two occasions in the past 3 months where I booked tks on ual.com and then checked 2 wks later and they were less, called cs and they issued me vouchers for 53 and 47 dollars. Not sure how I'm going to redeem the vouchers yet but I'VE GO MY MONEY BACK. Point being I didn't even try ual.com. Now I need to find out how to use my vouchers.

row1a

Took a bit of legwork
 

I have been able to reprice five separate tickets and have had a variety of issues come up.

One fare dropped by $330 and my credit care was refunded the amount - this one worked with no problems.

I had refunds of $70, $72 and $54 that were to be mailed to me. I didnt get the vouchers after a couple months. I tried a long merry go round of calls when I had time and could never get through (departments referrign me to each other). I had one csr suggest that I use the website on-line refund request email. I did this and didnt get a response for weeks. In the interim, I finally had a chance to call the refunds dept while they were open during the day. a very nice csr was able to look up each ticket number and check the address that the voucher was supposedly sent to. The address was correct and the mailed dates were all different but I didnt receive any of them. The csr on the phone checked with her supervisor and told me she would make a "one time only exception" to policy and reissue the vouchers. I got all three in one envelope about 10 days later.

The one other refared/refund I was just able to process a couple minutes ago for $96 :). I will hope for the best as far as receiving the voucher.

Denvercccc

Once I tried to reprice a ticket that inculdes a NRT-SFO and then SFO-ORD segment. UA.com didn't recognize the time difference between NRT and SFO and insisted that my flights were out of sequence, and refused to re-price.

It also seems to have problems with open jaws.

just want to reiterate...
 

... the counsel about determining
ALL
the consequences of refaring. I saved myself $20, but lost upgradability on a transoceanic flight
:mad:
And no, the agent did NOT caution me...

None of these apply to my tickets. This used to be a faster way to find out if the fares had dropped for my bookings. I got a refund voucher earlier this year; came within two weeks.