Ticketing by Mail, How does it work
 

I have a $200 CR certificate, and an itinerary on hold which will expire tonight.

The base fare is $182, taxes $64. Total ticket price is $246.

How can I do ticketing by mail? Call UA? :confused:

Do I pay $46 or $64?

$46.

Call the 1K desk. They will set it up for you and tell you where to send it. They need a credit card for the balance due. They will tell you it must be postmarked by today. But if you send it in tomorrow, you will be fine.

Upgrades can be requested, but not issued, until it is ticketed, however.

Call UA, tell them you want to ticket by mail with the certificate. They'll give you all the info you need (deadline, how to endorse the cert, where to send it). They'll also tell you how much you'll have to pay. They will have to receive the cert in enough time to satisfy all advance purchase requirements for you to keep the fare.

Also remember - you are sending cash. Treat it appropriately.

My experience has been that they cannot even be requested until the itin is ticketed.

I also suggest sending a copy of your held itinerary, and writing the PNR on the cert itself. Make it as easy as possible for them :)

I've done this many times, and don't recall having any problems.

My experience as well. Which is why I always ticket at the airport - there is no guarantee when they'll ticket by mail.

One other FYI--I have been told that determining when one's ticket will be processed [in Dearborn, MI] is by the departure date of your trip. This becomes a bit more significant if waiting to upgrade with miles on a heavily traveled route with limited upgrade capacity. To speed what I can... I use USPS overnight since the delivery is to a P.O. Box, and delivery can be on a Sat for same cost.

This may or may not apply to your particular situation, but is traceable.

On hold with 1K line now (apparently connected to ICC :( )

The agent said I could not apply the certificate because this CR voucher is more than base fare.

Then he promptly gave me the UA web support phone # and get me off his line. :mad: :mad:

What is this? :confused:

Thanks... The travel will be Oct so there is plenty of time. It's domestic itinerary but does contain one p.s. flight. UG availability is wide open.

But the fare is so good that I have to grab it.

You can also ask an agent for the physical street address if you'd rather use UPS or FedEx. (In fact, you can search the UA forum for Dearborn and it'll show up).

I've only used TBM once. I sent in the voucher for a trip three weeks out via FedEx Standard Overnight and the itinerary was ticketed the same day the envelope arrived at UA.

I called again
 

Okay I hanged up. Waited 20 min, and called 1K line again. ;)

This time the agent (not sure if she is from ICC or not) quickly set up the itinerary, gave me the mailing address of UA Ticket By Mail and told me that I have 2 weeks to mail the certificate.

Total charge: $46.40 as usually knowledgeable iluv2fly indicated.:-: :-:

One flight segment is UA 15 JFK-SFO on P.S., showing NC9.

I have never experienced P.S. I am excited!

Thanks everyone for helping tips and suggestions. ^ ^

BTW: I will send the certificate with the PNR marked to Dearborn MI 48121 by Certified Mail tomorrow.

The risk of ticketing at the airport is that the agent may refuse to ticket it saying things like discount certificate doesn't apply. Then I would have wasted 1-2 hrs plus parking tolls etc.

Over the phone at least if I got a crappy agent I could always hang up and call back. ;)

I am applying a $200 CS certificate to an April 21 mileage run I had been holding on united.com. I called the 1K desk and requested to mail my certificate to the Dearborn address and pay the difference ("ticket by mail").

Basically, I was unable to make it to the airport today, but I did not want to lose the last T inventory seat on several of the flights when the online hold period terminated overnight tonight. Otherwise, the fare went up nearly $150.

Is it still possible for me to go to the airport and have the itinerary ticketed instead of mailing the certificate and waiting up to 2 weeks? I am hoping so, specifically so I can go ahead and request my upgrades.

I would say the risk of that happening is as close to zero as you can get. I've never had that happen.

As long as you still meet all the ticketing requirements, yes.

Some random thoughts: a year or so ago, there were lots of reports of it taking the full 14 days or even more to get a TBM itin ticketed. That seems to have improved.

I wouldn't mind going to the airport if a) it weren't either a 2 hour drive or 45 minute flight to a UA ticket counter, b) I could absolutely, positively know for sure that the airport agent (so many of whom seem so little trained in ticketing these days) would know how to do what I needed and know that for Travel Credits there is not supposed to be an airport ticketing fee (if you're 1K you don't have to worry about this obviously).

If the itin is far out and the upgrade inventory looks fine, then I'll using TBM because at least I know that the folks in the Dearborn office do nothing but ticketing and they know how to do it -- and I've never been charged a ticketing fee either when using them.

By the way, my last two tickets-by-mail were accompanied by two $100 travel credits that were given and which each had different names on them. Although their T&Cs of these certs state that if the value of the credit is more than $25 the person who is named on the cert must redeem them in person for someone else, Dearborn ticketed my itins just fine and we didn't need to use the fallback plan of either the faxed gift letter or returning the certs to me and having my gifter do it in person. My sense is that there might be more of a problem ticketing at the airport.