HELP: charge for replacement paper ticket
 

I'm hoping someone can give me advice on the following problem. I have some friends visiting from China who were using multi-city paper tickets to fly around the United States. As they checked-in for their last flight, it was discovered that the flight coupon for one member of their party was missing. It was no doubt pulled inadvertently by a previous agent, probably for the last flight.

UA was totally unhelpful to them and, as you can read below, made them buy a full-fare replacement ticket! I've now been contacted by my friend for help. Below is her story. Is there anything we can do to get at least some of their money back? Thanks.
__________________________________________________ ___________

When we checked in at United Airline desk in Las Vegas (our flight was:
May 30, Las Vegas to San Francisco), the UA staff found that my father's paper ticket lost one page, only the last sheet -- receipt page still there.

We tried to explained them we had no any idea on how to lost that page,
and asked them to consider our situation reasonably. However, even if the UA staff knew we paid the airfare and nobody used that ticket, they still requested us to buy a new ticket. At last, I had no choice but to buy a new one for my father at full amount (us$203.91). While we landed at San Francisco airport, we went to UA service desk to consult. The UA
officer in SF airport confirmed that for such case (lost ticket), passengers will only need to pay upto US$100/ticket to get a re-issued one but not to buy a new one.

I felt very angry for the unfair treatment in Las Vegas UA desk.

My question is:

Does there any possibility for me to get back the overpaid airfare if
we write a complain letter to UA headquarters in Chicago, meanwhile, I
also want to get a formal apology from UA because of its Las Vegas Staff's unfair/rude treatment, they violate company policy, don't they?

Thanks

IIRC, (its been a while since I've seen/used a paper ticket)....

Yes, you should be able to get the LAS-SFO fare refunded, provided you find/replace the missing paper coupon.

FWIW, I believe the UA staff in LAS used the correct procedure for this. However, please find out if your friends were truely treated poorly (which is VERY possible as LAS) or if there were just not getting the answer they "wanted" to hear.


IMO, have your friends try for e-tickets next time (I know they are not always possible).

Also, Here is what .bomb says:

Yeah, I'm sure they had paper tickets because they bought them in China (probably not a smart move, but that was probably "easier" for them at the time).

Is there any procedure for return of "inadvertently" pulled tickets? As I said, I'd bet anything that the coupon was inadvertently pulled for the prior flight. The airlines still use a central clearinghouse for tickets, right? I wonder if it can somehow be flagged there.

I'm very rusty with my paper ticket knowledge, too. I've probably used 3 of them in the past 5 years, all overseas.

This case obviously shows why paper tickets are bad to have, despite what some travel pundits will say about their easier transferability in cases of late/cancelled flights. The bad far outweighs the good, and innocent travellers can lose bigtime (especially since nobody is "used to" paper tickets anymore and mistakes are probably more common).

Why would UA transport someone without a ticket?

I imagine you're not in a customer service business. It's obvious the person had a ticket and, through no fault of his own, somebody pulled it (almost certainly a previous gate agent). I assume UA will get paid for the first ticket and now for the (more expensive) second ticket.

I suppose it's a good idea for every pax travelling with a paper ticket to review the remaining documents after each check-in, but do YOU want to hold them liable for the full loss if they don't do this and an agent makes a mistake?

I don't think UA did the right thing here. Do you?

IMO, This is a pretty bold assumption. No one know who pulled the ticket.... or heck, maybe your friend lost the ticket, or maybe the T/A never gave them the ticket.

Yes, not only a good idea... but should be SOP for ANYONE with a paper ticket.

Again, like my first reply.... we don't know if it was a UA agent who made the mistake.

The CSR's in LAS needed a ticket for your friend.... It was NOT the fault of LAS operations that your friend didn't have his ticket.

Like I suggested above... get the missing coupon replaced, and try for a refund.

A paper ticket is like cash and should be treated as such.

If your friend put a reservation on hold and went to the airport to pay for it, but found that is wallet was empty would you expect UA to give him the ticket anyway because it is obvious that he "meant to buy it?"

Paper tickets are awesome if you know what you're doing and may need flexibility in your schedule. Most people who request paper tickets do so for very specific reasons, but they're also aware of the value of said ticket.

While it is certainly unfortunate that your friend lost his ticket, it is completely wrong to say that he was treated "unfairly," "poorly" and "rudely" siimply because UA required him to purchase a ticket to travel on the next flight out.

If it's like cash, does that mean if I find someone else's ticket I can fly instead of the person named on the ticket?

Well, I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly how the CS staff behaved. That said, if I was travelling in China and something like this happened to me (remembering, of course, that most of the documents would then be in Chinese and the procedures would be unfamiliar to me), I'd be pretty P.O'd.

It's a classic "gotcha" problem.

Good point. These days, it would be pretty much impossible for anyone to use your ticket absent forged documents and such or a similarly elaborate scheme.

The ticket receipt shows what segments were issued in the ticket and it comes in booklet so I don't think the TA could have "forgotton" to give them a coupon - the TA would have had to actively pull out the coupon from the booklet AFAIK. I may be wrong though - feel free to correct.

I use paper tickets wherever possible and if and when I lose the them, the charge has always been only $100 (no matter which airline) and the exact same ticket is reprinted and given to me by my TA.

In the OP's situation, I think the correct thing for UA to do would have been to charge the $100 and re-issue the ticket but I doubt there was time for that. Morevoer, I doubt the check-in agents would have the knowledge on how to do this. Therefore, I think the only way for them to get on the flight they wanted was to charge the full fare ticket and then have the group take it up with UA later.

I think there is a good chance that he can get a refund for his walk up fare by paying the $100 to re-issue the ticket if he contacts UA.

Good Luck :)

Cheers,

Actually, I have traveled in China... and I took the time to learn what I needed to travel ahead of time. Actually someone did try taking an extra bus ticket (Yiwu-NGB-PVG) and I would only give them one of the coupons (I know I needed the second for the NGB-PVG). Now what do you think "China state owned bus company" would have done for me if I gave/lost/never recieved the second ticket?

BTW, what is a classic "gotcha" problem?

Why would your friend hand the ticket for a different flight to the gate agent in the first place? Or did he just hand over the whole stack of tickets at the gate and rely on the gate agent to pull only the correct one? I'm just trying to understand how he believes the gate agent pulled the wrong one.

I'm sorry your friend had problems. I think he may be entitled to a refund of the money he spent over the $100, if it can be shown that he should have only been charged that for the lost ticket. However, beyond that, I doubt any further compensation is available.

Paper tickets are a lot more common than you probably think... A lot of airlines simply don't have interline e-ticket agreements (ever flown an HP-operated flight on UA ticket stock? ;) ), and when you're flying on two airlines that can't see into each other's reservations system, they really do make life easier.

That being said... I think the biggest problem with paper tickets is improper training, and you're right that mistakes are more common--I once had a boarding pass reissued and the agent (UA) threw away the flight coupon that was stapled to the original BP.

The bottom line though is that if you complain, UA will probably back up its agents based on your description of what happened. It's an easy slip-up, but your friends probably should have been more careful with the flight coupon--there's not a lot the UA agents could have done at that point, and $200 isn't a huge sum to pay in the grand scheme of things.