I just tried to apply a $75 e-Certificate from the 5000 miles promo to a DEN-LAS RT for $98.30, theoretically leading to a great fare of $23.30 RT all-in. Surprisingly, it priced out w/ certificate to $83.30. I called CS who was surprised as well and after 4 transfers I learned:

While it is possible to overpay with a paper certificate (and get a certificate with the difference back), you can't do that with an e-Certificate. It has to be used in full or not at all. So, when the base fare is less ($72.55) than the e-Certificate, you can not use it. The frustrating thing is that I didn't see that restrictions in the T&C of the promo. Any ideas of how to use it anyway?

There are DEN to LAS tix that are $118.30 all in--base fare should be high enough to use the ecert.

The only fares I have found for the whole month of February were $98.30 and $173.30 all-in, where the latter one defeating the purpose of using the e-cert in the first place

The $108 fare is only in March. But in March I don't want to go to LAS.

Bummer. Well, you could always burn 1,000 miles and get the $25 ecert. I think the one you've already bought is good thru at least 6/30/07 if you have any other pleasure travel coming up. On the positive side, a $98 ticket to LAS isn't all that bad....GOOD LUCK!!!!

You are right. If your base fare is less than the discount, ual.bomb doesn't know how to handle it & ignores the discount. (bad programming ) And the agents cannot seem to figure it out either. So your only option is to use the $25 off cert. Or you can try banging your head against the wall of ual.com cs again and again.
You never know, sometimes miracles happen. Maybe one of them will figure out how to make it actually work?

You never get the difference back from a discount certificate - only from a Type B voucher or unused ticket credit.

I tried using a $100 E-Cert I got for a refund of a changed flight. The fare w/o the cert was $300. When I entered the cert number the fare went down, but only to $230. It's as if the E-Cert was being treated as a paper cert you have to bring into the ticket office and charging me a handling fee.

anyone have any success doing a refare once the 75 cert has been applied ?

Forgive me, please, can someone quickly point me to the promo offering $75 certs for 5K miles?

I used a $100 paper TDC on a fare whose base was $98. The CSR had to put me on hold and check with her supervisor, but the exception was approved.

And the limitation of the $100 to be applied against base fare is nowhere on the cert's T&Cs

I was able to work through web support to get just the base fare ($72.55) applied to my $75 e-cert for a recent LAX-LAS roundtrip. This happened just as the e-cert promotion was beginning, and it took a LOT of time to make it work out. I'm not sure they'd do this now that some of the bugs in the process have been ironed out.

I'd suggest that the OP just book a slightly higher fare basis (i.e. T instead of S) in one direction - that should be about $10 more and should allow the use of the e-cert. One way to do this is to hold a reservation on-line that included a higher fare (you can probably just specify refundable) that recognized your e-cert, then call UAL and have them make changes to fare buckets that still allow for a base fare of more than $75. Then you can go back and purchase the ticket on-line, so there's no need to pay a phone charge, you get 500 miles for the on-line booking, and you can be sure that your e-cert gets used.

Good luck!

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