SFOTurtle

I'm well aware of the many threads on the filtering of *A awards on other carriers when trying to redeem UA MP miles. What just happened to me is something worse in my view, and the blame appears to lay both with UA and also NH in this case. Apologies for the length of this email.

Three days ago I spent an hour on the phone making an award reservation for me and my fiancee in C class to Asia for next spring (of course, I had to call back twice to get an agent that seemed somewhat competent after the first two agents said that they didn't think that NH operated the route). The outbound segment was on NH from SFO-NRT with travel on to BKK on Thai. The return was from HKG-YVR-SFO on AC. All segments had C availability for two, except there was only one C seat on the HKG-YVR flight. Because of this, the reservations agent said she had to do two different PNRs, with my fiancee's a paper ticket because the miles were coming from my account. My cc was charged (as it turns out, only for my pnr), the miles were deducted, and I received a confirming email for my reservation. I assumed that my fiancee would receive the ticket in the mail.

Today, I went on-line to check her reservation just to make sure it all looked good (yes, I know, I should have done this the next day, but it was 11:30 p.m. and I got side-tracked the next day). Her reservation says it is confirmed, great, fine. The bad news is that there is no SFO-NRT leg showing at all for hers. I call UA immediately, and here begins the BS.

First, the agent tells me that NH has cancelled the flight altogether, so she needs to put me on hold to figure out what alternative arrangements they can make. I don't buy this for a hearbeat, so I immediately go to ANA's website which shows that the flight is still there and also has F and C award seats. Any UA's website still shows me as being booked on that flight. After 20 minutes of being on hold, the agent comes back and says that they have put both of us on a flight operated by UA that leaves SFO 30 mins later (making the connection in NRT pretty tight for my liking, especially with weather delays in the spring here). I then asked/told her that NH had not cancelled the flight, correct? The agent then changed her story and said it wasn't, but NH has cancelled out both of our award reservations, and they are not allowing any award seats in business at this time for other *A members, but only for NH members. It turns out that they have not charged my cc for her reservation, although they have for mine. She says that the reason I was on hold for 20 minutes is because they had contacted NH to see if they would reinstate both of our reservations, but NH said no. After about 10 mins of her trying to find alternative seats on NH, she finally says that they will escalate this again to NH, but I would need to call back on Monday to see if we have had any luck talking with NH, something about NH's office somewhere not being open until Monday. I then asked to speak to a supervisor.

After waiting five minutes, the supervisor -- maybe the rudest person I've ever spoken with at UA -- comes on and immediately says to me in a most unfriendly tone, "all we can do is offer you seats on the UA flight, nothing else." I said I was told that someone would be contacting NH on Monday to escalate my request, and he says no, we can't do that. I asked, "you can't, or you won't?" A: [repeats same mantra -- all we can do ...] Q: Why can't you speak to someone live at NH? A: same response, even interrupting me while I'm asking my questions. He refused to answer why. He also said that no one had spoken to NH while I was on hold, directly contradicting what the previous agent had said. The last twist -- he says that I still have *my* reservation on NH, despite what the first agent had said.

The supervisor then demanded that I make a decision *immediately* as to whether I would change both reservations to the UA flight, or then have *all* of the other segments for my fiancee cancelled. I then demanded to know why no one at UA had contacted me about this for the past three days, and this problem was only discovered by me, and yet he has the chutzpah to demand that I make a decision immediately or else lose all of my other supposedly "confirmed" award space!? And this from a supervisor who supposedly is trained in customer relations?

I know a lot of people on this board might just say, "that's today's UA" and "why didn't you just take the seats on the UA flight?" I specifically booked this itinerary so that I could fly NH because its product is far superior to UA C. I spent an hour on the phone doing this earlier this week, and a lot of other time using the ANA tool researching options for this trip. Right now, the SFO-NRT flight on UA is a 777, of which none have the new C and the likelihood of getting that next spring isn't very high unless you have the mentality of a die-hard United apologist. I've flown on UA int'l C many times with the old hard product, and it is not on par with NH C in my view. If I knew that this would be the new C product, then I would be fine with the change.

But the bigger points here are that NH unilaterally and without notice refused to honor a *A award that by all reasonable accounts had been confirmed -- or at least that's what the agent told me 3 nights ago when the 180 (90 x 2) K miles were deducted; UA hadn't even bothered to contact me to inform me of this; and now UA doesn't care enough to ask NH to abide by the rules (which probably are broken every day anyway) and is making up lies and changing stories with each question I ask.

Sorry for the long rant. I'm wondering if others have faced the same predicament, and whether anyone has had any success by pursuing this. ave any recourse?

SuperFlyBoy

Sorry to hear your experience! to UA!

In a similar vein:

BD is stating that *LH* is dictating to them that they cannot issue miles+cash *A redemptions in First for some weird reason...

Granted that LH just purchased some minority shareholding, it still doesn't mean that they can decide what can, and cannot be done by BD's FF program.

If your experience is the same as the above, then I think we cannot even feel safe in our *A FF redemptions these days...

However, I think that it is a case of the airlines trying to do loss-minimization and not allow "expensive" redemptions that would out them a lot of money/credits in the *A program.... (Thus, effectively *lies*, and nothing more)

sakuya

I doubt NH did this to you but more likely is that UA mess up and didn't issue the ticket by paying NH. I have been changing one of my award ticket with NH and I notice the NH award tool will show my original ticket date is still unavailable. I sometimes wonder how long does NH release the space back when an award is returned or hang in the air (due to lack of payment from UA).

stewardo

Sounds to me like UA messed up or never even made the original booking for your fiancee - and the defensive attitude/rude service was just their way of getting out of the situation. I bet NH had nothing to do with any of the troubles you had.

UA 882

Correct. This is not an NH issue. Just normal Starlink/UA issues.

UA 882

This is going to take the thread slightly off topic, but the BD-LH scenario can not be compared with the UA cr*p that's happening here.

BD is going to be going through a lot of changes through this year and next, and LH is going to sit in the power-seat.

ual744777sta

It is sometimes good to get the NH PNR record for your reservation and call them. If UA can not see the NH PNR you can obtain it from NH. Then call NH to get your seat assignments and confirm the reservation.

izzik

Star Alliance awards do not guarantee a particular carrier. If you want to fly NH and United MP is telling you that only the UA flight is available, you are probably out of luck. Better off buying tickets on NH if you are absolutely determined to fly them.

yuenpo

Heard from my travel agent that recently UA decided to block the people using other carriers for award tickets since it costs them too much. They even suggest the staff in reservation to take all non-UA flight off from current reservations (even ticketed) and just reschedule them on UA if UA is available on that route.

(information not confirmed)

raptor288

have you tried calling ANA and the United MP at the same time (i.e. 3 way call), I'm sure they wouldn't like it too much, but it might be able for you to get through some of the conflicting stories.

However, I'm sure that idea is way easier said than done.

gleff

United does block redemptions on many flights operated by their partners, some in particular such as Lufthansa transatlantic and intra-Europe and Thai Europe - Bangkok, as well as ANA occasionally and OZ JFK-ICN (though seemingly not in my experience other routes).

There aren't any reports here that I can recall of ticketed reservations being unilaterally changed by UA in this manner.

SFOTurtle

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I have not tried this one, but will try calling back tomorrow to see if someone would be able to speak live to a person at NH.

One thought occurred to me -- the fact that I did the reservations separately, probably allowed NH an excuse to pull the other seat before it was actually confirmed/ticketed. In other words, if I had done this as one PNR (I guess reserving only Y for AC trans-Pacific portion), and had them e-ticketed immediately, would this mix-up still have happened? I'm guessing not. That gets me wondering that assuming I get nowhere on Monday, if I should cancel everything and put my awad seat back into NH's C inventory and see if NH makes two seats available again?

TerryK

Immediately means within a few days in this context.

Interline bookings need to be confirmed back by the operating carrier. The operating carrier can reject the booking within 24 to 48 hours, depending on carrier. This applies to paid bookings as well. The reason being the seats may not be available after all. The availability UA sees may not be "live", it could be stale.

The initial booking agent erred in not informing you to call back in 48 hours to reconfirm the booking on NH. It is a UA agent mistake and UA should fix it. Unfortunately, UA prefers to offer flights on their own metal to you. NH has nothing to do with it.

BTW, The thread title is misleading. It sounds like you were denied boarding or downgraded with a UA issued *A C award ticket, while you actually didn't have a ticket at all.

UnitedA380

WOW it is such a nightmare to redeem tickets these days.

Ibarra

Umm, no, not really.

Sure there can be errors due to incompetencies and restrictions that go along with certain award types, but to generalize it as a nightmare is simply an exaggeration.