i'mlovin'it

Did a search but didn't see anything on the topic.

I was trying to upgrade a LH flight via the Star Alliance Upgrade site on united.com and got this message:


Star Alliance Upgrades
Effective June 1, 2007:
We will no longer accept Star Alliance Upgrade Award requests. We expect to have this feature online in the future.

We apologize for any inconvenience.


Anyone hear anything about this?

brahms77

This is something of a news to me as well... Did you try calling 1K line and ask about this?

Ari

I got the same message.

What gives?!?

This was a great feature that I have used almost a dozen times.

shinbal

Well explained as usual, with customer focus at the forefront of the decision.

Some notice about this would have been nice.

holtju2

My hunch is that other *A carriers were overwhelmed with the upgrade requests coming from UA MP members.

BenjaminNYC

This is sad. I used the system sucessfully about 5 times, and failed about 15 times. But I guess something is better than nothing. I bet it never returns. As hotju2 pointed out, I bet other *A carriers were overwhelmed with requests from bloated MP accounts.

Since I have almost no miles on UA and plan to never credit to them again (this is ANOTHER reason now), it doesn't effect me, but another devaluation is not a good thing for those MP members sitting with millions of miles that can't be used, thanks to Starnet.

Surprised? No. Sign of the times? Yes.

UNITED959

Sure, they take away the one component of united.com that was actually quite reliable...

UrbaneGent

Tried to do it here in BKK for an LX flight and came up with the same message, what crap -

UG

zrs70

looks like what I reported is true!

www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=699106

iwillflytheworld

Unreal... again no advance notice, no notice of any kind actually, no information on whether this is for a short term or forever. But I'm sure when we complain they will say they "were going to send ad e-mail on June 17 and are sorry that this information got leaked before" .

i'mlovin'it

Probably. But at the same time, it's not like you could buy a cheap ticket to use the system.

UNITED959

True, but a $4k full Y (flown in C) is a lot cheaper than $7-8k paid C.

i'mlovin'it

Sure. But in addition to the $4K full Y ticket, the operating carrier is collecting miles, which I'm guessing it turns over to UA for "payment"--whatever that's worth.

Also, with a corp discount, those $7-8K TATLs C Fares become $4-5K TATL C Fares.

sandiegofun

When I go to request an upgrade I get:

Star Alliance Upgrades
Effective May 31, 2007:
We will no longer accept Star Alliance Upgrade Award requests at this time.

We apologize for any inconvenience


I guess that they decided to move it back by a day to increase the no notification time....
This better be temporary, as it was one of the real benefits of Star over Oneworld for me.

travlnfu

I upgraded a Thai Air ticket from Q to B just so I could upgrade but started experiencing problems with the website when I tried to process the upgrade request. The original error was that the upgrade could not be processed at this time and to try again later. I tried several times over a 36 hour preiod and spoke with several people including Tech support and the 1K desk. The 1K desk kept telling me the same thing that they could not help and the request could only be processed online. One operator also told me that she hadn't heard anything about a problem with the website inferring that I was lying to her.

I'm trying to do this in Vietnam and I spend about 30US on telephone calls to the USA. Last night, I got an answer that they were having problems with the website and that this feature would be out for an undetermined amount of time. I was never told that it the program was canceled.

I hope that it is only a technical problem. I'm new to this forum. Is this about par for the course? No announcement and limited information with uninformed customer service?