e-certs are worthless
 

Frustration levels running high here.

Completed a trade on CC and got a $100 ecert. I went to united.crap to book my eligible ticket (book by 10/31, min $250 published base fare) and the original fare is only reduced by $26. What is the point of distributing e-certs that the website can not handle. A phone call was neccessary to "try" to rectify the problem within a week.

Ditto for me
 

I've tried using various %-off and $-off e-certs over the last several months without any success (even though I've always met the conditions of the certs).

It's no big deal, but it does leave me feeling a little bit like I've been "had" each time.

While I had a long string of bad luck, the last three e-certs I used (10% and 2 x $200) all worked as advertised.

Many people have reported problems with this in many threads before. A common suggestion is to book the ticket anyways and then keep calling United Web Support until you find someone who is aware of the problem and have them credit it back to your card. I have not really been keeping up on it, but I think some people have received the money back they were suppoed to get.

At least something got taken off of your fare. Most people report the infamous "I found a lower fare than the one that is e-Cert eligible" message eventhough your e-Cert is good on all fares... I had 2x$100 certs. Neither worked, then one worked and the other had to be replaced by a paper cert. The one that worked online took off exactly $100 as it was supposed to. The paper replacement cert obviously worked and I didin't even have to pay the phone booking fee, maybe because I was using the paper cert and had no other choice.

On the other hand, I have never gotten the e-Certs from the Entertainment book to work, no matter what I do....

You are not alone in your frustration. Just remember, you always have 24 hours to cancel if Web Support says they can't do anything.

See my thread "If you used an E-Cert recently you may have been overcharged" http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=479689 and the others referenced in post #38. UA is aware of the problem. You can ask ual.crap support to refund the difference.

Sometimes they will refund, sometimes they won't until you make many calls and dispute it with your credit card, sometimes they refund correctly, sometimes too much, sometimes too little. YMMV.

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This topic has been discussed quite a lot in at least FIVE other threads, including the one that Gene posted above. For links to the other threads, look at my post here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...4&postcount=38

The devil is in the details. If you read the T&Cs, you'll find that some of these e-certs (including the type being discussed on this thread, the "dollars-off" kind), are NOT valid on internet-only fares (among other restrictions). In such a case, the website will often notch up to the next higher available fare, and apply the discount to that. This is perfectly legit.

To ascertain whether a fare is internet-only, you need to look at the fare rules (by clicking on "fare rules"). Most people don't think to do this, so they leap to the conclusion that the system is cheating them whenever the discount is less than they had hoped.

HOWEVER, having said all that, it IS true that sometimes the website erroneously assumes that a fare is internet-only, or is otherwise ineligible for the discount, when in fact it is eligible. I have spent a lot of hours trying to redeem $200-off e-certs (I had nine of them in total, purchased from United for 15,000 miles apiece), so I know how buggy the system is, and it nearly drove ME buggy! I did finally manage to redeem all my certs by a few days before the expiration date, and I did get reasonably good use out of them. But it wasn't easy. In addition to the nine $200-off e-certs, I successfully redeemed a 10% off Europe e-cert that was offered in a recent promo.

So, having ten recent e-cert redemptions under my belt, I would NOT call them "worthless" by any means. :D

I would recommend NEVER waiting till the last minute before the deadline to redeem such certs. Also, it would pay to do a bit of research by reading the relevant threads before even acquiring and using e-certs!!! That's what FlyerTalk is for. @:-)

I was successful last year with e-certs but ever since the computer fiasco a month or so ago, I have not been able to use any. And, about that time, united.crap was giving a fare $200 greater than the special "webfare" I got on the phone. I am really mad about that one since I missed out on not only the 1000 bonus points but also the eqm's you are supposed to get with your credit card and no one at UA will take responsibility. Right now I am in a VERY foul mood because, once again, UA's computer geniuses have screwed up and have wakened me twice this week in the middle of the night with Easy Updates.

I gotta disagree on this one. These are the relevant T&C's I had on my "dollars off" certs:

ALLOWABLE FARES:
This discount can be used on all First, Business and Economy booking
classes. The fare purchased must be greater than the value of the
certificate you are redeeming.
RESTRICTED FARES:
This discount may not be used on the following fare types: Fares that
are not displayed as electronic certificate eligible on united.com


There is nothing that disallows Internet only fares anywhere in the T&C's, yet I had many problems trying to redeem them even when the little green star showed up.

Now I agree that there are many different problems out there and that some of the certs may have the "no internet fare" clause in there, but it is not the source of all the problems. United.com is the source of all the problems and that is about the only sweeping statement that can be made.

:td:

You're kidding right? Conspiracy to commit fraud? We can barely prove that the e-certs don't work properly, let alone a malicious intent that would satisfy the burden of a criminal court. You ought to rethink this or just stop flying UA if not getting a $25-50 discount ruffles your plume so much. I'm going to presume that you're gonna say its the principle of the matter, but I think that's a bunk way to cover for being sore about not getting the discount.

I would have agreed with the original poster, and all subsequent negative comments, except that I managed to get a $100 e-cert to work last night FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER! :D And on an open-jaw, no less!

Amazing how low my standards have sunk. (It actually took $99 and change off, but I can live with that--assuming it's a tax calculation).

Go back and re-read my post, please (and read it carefully and completely). WHERE did I say that "it is the source of all the problems?" On the contrary, I said the following (bolding added):

And, just FYI, here are a portion of the T&Cs of my $200-off e-certs (cut and pasted from the offer, bolding added):

I think a big problem is the lack of transparency (to use a currently fashionable buzzword) as to whether a particular fare should or should not qualify for the e-cert discount. And as I have said on this thread and several others (links provided above), it is QUITE CLEAR that the website is buggy and inconsistent (i.e., sometimes it works properly, sometimes it doesn't) wrt these certs (notwithstanding any failures by some to understand what I posted).

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I focused too much on the following sentence

I had thought you were implying that all "dollar off" certs were restricted against Internet fares which is not the case. Didn't want people to just assume that their T&C's would be the same because their certs are "dollar off" certs.

That being said, I have experienced many failures where all fares should be eligible, and are marked as such with the little green star, but yet the website still fails miserably with the ubiquitous "I found a lower fare that is not e-Cert eligible" message which is of course impossible because all fares should be eligible.

Eventhough we may have miscommunications via the things that we type, I think we can all agree that United.com needs a major overhaul in the area of e-Certs (as well as many other places as evidenced by the fact that we now have a sticky thread dedicated to it)

Psst, did you know that you can adjust your preferences and set a 'quiet period' to avoid exactly that kind of wake-update? ;)

What she said ^

Question for you, Kathy... Were you able to use $-off e-certs on multi-city itineraries? IME, %-off certs do not work for that, and of course, ual.com chokes on anything other than the most basic R/T itinerary (and even on those, it doesn't give you all the available options). For this reason, %-off certs have diminished value to me... just wondering if I can expect the same with $-off certs (before I get some).

Thanks.

edited to add: when I say 'multi-city' I mean searching on ual.com under the 'multi-city' option.

I do believe the poster is referring to the fact that sometimes the computer messes up and ignores the "quiet" period.

You may be right... I certainly did not draw that inference from what she said.

I also just realized that it does not adjust for timezones. I was on a quick turn in BWI last weekend. I didn't get my easy update until I could check my voicemail at LAX and it was sent at 6:30am PDT, but my flight left at 8:30am EDT meaning I got the update 1 hour after I left BWI.

OK, no problem. Glad we are on the same page after all. ^

To reiterate what I've said here and on the other relevant threads: Sometimes the website works fine with e-certs and sometimes it screws up horribly. :(

And as for WindFlyer's question about "multi-city" itineraries (that are in reality roundtrips), I gave up trying to use that option because the website seemed to be programmed to automatically reject it as ineligible. I don't know if this has been fixed; it's been a while since I tried it.

BTW, a workaround I use to get the website to show more of the possible itineraries is to edit the URL: I change the "air_avail" parameter to make it larger than the normal 20 (or 10 or 5). This is a suggestion made by another FTer (whose name I can't recall now). Unfortunately, even if air_avail is set to a very high number, like 200 or even more, it doesn't magically show ALL possible itineraries. But at least it will usually show MORE of them.

And I should add by way of explanation as to how I was able to have so much success with my ten e-certs, given the website malfunctioning: First of all, many of my trips were mileage runs, and they were all discretionary. So if one itinerary and/or destination and/or date didn't work, I would try different ones. And/or I would come back to the website later and try again. It really took a lot of persistence, a truly unreasonable amount of persistence in fact. I don't think the average consumer should be expected to go through that to redeem e-certs!!! :eek: :eek: :eek:

I just tried one and it got rejected with a message about the cert only being good for roundtrips.

-Edit: My mistake, I tried with a %off cert, not a $ off cert as WindFlyer was asking about. I don't have any $ off certs available to test.

It worked just fine on mine--I used multi-city to price it, but it was actually an open-jaw. I was sure it wouldn't take, but there was no problem at all.

An update to all who care, I just got an updated E-Ticket receipt from UA reflecting the $100 e-cert.

It seems as if a new ticket number was issued. Will I still earn the 1,000 mile online booking bonus and the double miles per the United M+ Visa promotion?

Ok, I will change it to conspiricay to hire incompetent people.

In my case UA overcharged me a total of about $500.

It is principle and the fact that I suspect thousands of people have been overcharged hundreds of dollars.

I do have some encourging news. I will edit this post to the link when I have posted it. Give me 15 minutes, I type slow.

See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...8&postcount=57 for the good news.

Thanks for the response, Kathy. I am encouraged by the success reported by MKE-MR ^

My problem has been that ual.com often chokes on something like an SFO-GRU/GIG/EZE R/T (it gives me RG codeshares, or can't find anything and asks me to look for 'bigger cities' or something like that), even if I change the url to ge 50 flight choices. The workaround, of course, has been to specify the route via 'multi-city.'

I had despaired of using two $100 CR certs until I was booking online a PDX-MIA flight for mid-January. It easily let me apply one for my flight but since my wife actually uses her own name I had to set up a separate PNR for her and then it refused to honor the second e-cert and I gave up and paid the full fare rather than risk losing the same flights for us both.

Call ual.crap web support and tell them you want them applied. Incist on it. But don't hold you breath.

I recently tried using an entertainment book e-cert ($ off), and united.com gave me the same error message whenever I tried to create a multicity booking. When I called United phone support, they said my routing (BOS-SFO-PDX-SEA-PDX-SFO-BOS) was "not a roundtrip" because the stops weren't in hub cities and therefore did not qualify for a discount.

That sounds kind of like a crock to me. That is a RT from BOS to SEA with some connections. In recent promotions, there has been very specific language about roundtrips, such as this from the DC bonus offer:

"roundtrip travel is defined as travel from an origin city to a destination city with return travel beginning in the outbound destination city back to the first origin city"

I would say your flights qualify under ths definition (which I know is not binding because it is part of a promo). I will tout the FT motto, keep calling until you get someone who will give you the answer you are looking for.

You are due the 1K miles but will have to call MP to get them posted after the trip. I think the double miles will be OK since the but you will have to follow thru and make sure. The $100 will show as a credit and those EQM should be deducted. I have to keep a complex spreadsheet to make sure all mine are correct. BTW, MY spreadsheet is kindof messy so I don't want to send it out in case someone is interested.