Predicting to get the lowest booking code?
 

I booked a one way PDX-LAX on united.com on an S booking code for $104.40. After a few weeks of watching the website, I saw the price dropped to $74.39 for T booking code. I quickly gave a call and got a $30.01 travel credit.

I'm trying to book my return flight LAX-PDX. It's showing $182.40 V booking code. I see on the flight availability:
F6, ... Y9, T9, S9

So there are 9+ tickets for S and t.

1. How do I get the S or even better the T?
2. Do I wait until united post them? (like my PDX-LAX flight)
3. Do travel agents have them?
4. Is it possible for United to skip the whole S & T and only sell other booking code?

Thank you.

From my experiences with UA and UA.bomb, even though there are lower fare bucket listed as "9" unless it is published or available for sale on the route specified, .bomb won't sell it. Therefore, it often results in higher fare than what you would have predicted based on the availability. It seems like .bomb cannot mix fares - where I wanted to go out in H on the outbound and come back in W, .bomb always gave me H for both ways, making it much more expensive. :mad:

It has nothing to do with the web site. If there's not a published fare for a given fare bucket, you can't buy it. From anyone.

Not true (or at least not always true). It will quote the cheapest fare given the combinability restrictions. It's not always legal to mix fares, but it will do it if possible. I have plenty of mixed fare class bookings, all booked online. Now, you definitely can't force it to give you mixed fares, but that's a different issue.

Out of curiousity (and a newbie question to boot), how do you tell what fare class you're getting when looking at different itineraries on .bomb (prior to purchasing)? I tried looking at the "fare rules" and "fare details" but didn't see it.

Craig

I know what you mean, but there are many travel agents who sell unpublished fares especially for intl travel. In the type of situation described above(lots of availability but no published fares), I find them to be most useful.

I don't understand how you got a refund for the full price difference. I thought that if you wanted to change a ticket booked in a discount class like S you had to pay a sizeable change fee. What am I missing?

UA lets you reprice an itin for free for a lower fare, no matter what class you are.

Perhaps the S and T fares are valid for RT only?

As United737522 mentioned, itineraries can be "refared." What this means is that after you buy a ticket, if the price of the identical itinerary drops, you can get the fare difference credited as if you had bought the lower fare (the credit is either issued as a travel voucher, for nonrefundable fares, or your choice of voucher or CC refund, for refundable fares). This policy is essentially intended to encourage early booking (or, alternatively, to not discourage early booking) because you aren't "penalized" if the fare drops after you purchase.

There are no change fees in this case because you are not changing anything about the itinerary - the dates, times, and routing all stay the same - but rather exchanging your (old) higher-fare ticket for a (new) lower-fare ticket on the exact same itinerary. Change fees apply only when you are changing the itinerary (dates, times, and/or routing).

I don't change my itinerary. The only difference is the price. I called UA three times. First when the price dropped from $105 to 104. I tried for the first time see how much hassle I had to go through to get a $1 price adjustment. A few minutes of initial wait. I spoke to a CSR, put on hold for 18 minutes, and got my $1 refund. yay.... 18 minutes for 1 dollar.

The second time I called for price adjustment $104 to $74 for 2 pax. I got $30 credit for 1 pax. T code had only 1 slot at that time. This was on the very first day the price dropped. I called in around 1 pm. I spoke to her supervisor and didn't get anything but 1 $30 credit.

The third time, I checked UA again. It showed another T code was available! CSR said, no, sir, we cannot give you a credit for the price drop. I argued by stating that a friend of mine just got a $30 credit for the same exact flight yesterday (which was actually I myself). He put me on 6 minutes hold then got another $30 for the 2nd pax.

S & T code showed for one-way.

Thanks for clarifying this for me. :)