So I was booking 3 tickets CMH-LAX and to utilise our 3 $100off vouchers I needed to book each one individually.

So far so good. 2 booked fine, and yes you guessed it hit PURCHASE on the third one and it wasnt available any more.

As I think leaving one kid home alone while we head off to Paris is frowned upon , I attempted to buy the ticket without using the voucher. No dice.
All it offered me were flights 2 hours later.

That flight will book into H class , 4 times the fare

This flight isn't until Mid January.
What are my options.
Do they release more seats to the cheaper fare buckets?
Do I jus pony up the extra now

Obviously, I won't be leaving anyone behind no matter the cost, but do I have some time here to toughen it out for a bit?

As stated so many times, inventory management is a mystery noone is even attempting to solve. It all depends on loads as the date of travel nears. You may be lucky to see similar (probably higher) rates but nothing is guaranteed. My suggestion would be to wait a few days as H fares do not sell as quickly (but check the loads - if the fligth is almost sold out you have to buy now). If you end up buying at the given rate keep checking the prices as they may go down later, at which point you can get a refund (voucher) for the difference.

Also, although this may not help you now, keep in mind for the future that you can check availability in fare buckets before you purchase... you can do this on united.com or on seatcounter.com. There is an entry in the FAQ (stickied at the top of this forum) with instructions on how to check availability on either site.

If you check before purchasing, you are much more likely to find flights that have sufficient availability in the buckets you need. Sorry it didn't work out this time, but hopefully it will help in the future...

Note that cheaper seats may be released - someone with a cheap seat might cancel, for example. However, there's absolutely no way to know this, as the previous poster mentioned. If you buy now and the fare drops, you can always refare to get the difference as a Type B voucher. If you wait, you may run the risk of losing even the H fare, depending on availability.

Good luck...

So, getting back to the OP's situation. Is this one case where calling someone is advised? I assume that the phone charge is waived with certs. Do the agents have the ability to hold N seats at the fare (assuming they were available at the start of the transaction) and run each through on a different PNR?

It is more than likely that the OP only had 2 seats in the fare bucket, but there could be a situation where there were three and then somehow IM (or some other customer) takes the last one before the third transaction went through.

I assume using book and hold on .com wouldn't have helped in this case.

If there are no seats in the cheaper buckets, calling won't help.

The phone fee is only waived for paper certs. e-certs must be used online.

Thanks for the replys

Here's what I think happened, the 2 tickets I purchased both booked into L, part of a sale fare, combined with the ecerts it made pretty darn good buying.
I guess that bucket then zeroed out.

This morning it will let me purchase her a fare booking into W, I can use her cert, its not ideal but better than yesterdays H fare offering.

I think this might be one to just watch and wait on for a few.

Phoning won't help this particular situation... I don't think?
If the sale fare is gone...

I have several vouchers I received for discounts on certain classes or free, and ran into the same thing. I went to the website http://www.seatcounter.com/ and if entered UA 3 times for the airline. It then displayed the number of seats available for the specific flight at that time for that class. That sometimes helps.