United CSR refusing to cancel a segment of my itinerary
 

So I had an SFO-SEA itinerary booked for this weekend. My gf and I are going up to Vancouver. Last minute, I had to go to NY for work. So I just booked the following:

SFO-JFK -- LGA-DEN-YVR

I want to cancel the first portion of the ticket. I have had this situation occur MULTIPLE TIMES before, and they always can cancel one leg of my trip. Is there a specific policy I can cite to have her do this for me? Or did I just get lucky before? If so, I'm really screwed because I need the return flight from SEA-SFO at the end of the weekend... and i know if i just "miss" the first portion of the ticket, it will cancel the rest of the itinerary - help!

You can't just selectively cancel portions of your ticket without a re-fare, and doing it somewhat last minute could make the fare difference significant.

I've probably done this five or six times before... this is the first CSR to give me trouble.

I don't get why UA wouldn't WANT to do it... I'm paying for a round trip, but now i'm taking up one less seat that they can sell - sounds like a deal to me.

I'm amazed they would let you do it on a non-refundable ticket. You must have found someone who didn't care about their job...

Well because of the way pricing works out. If the OP has to be on that flight, he'll pay the fare difference. Take for example a TPA-SFO trip through IAD both ways for $250. The cheapest IAD-SFO published fare right now is ~$600. Should someone just be able to jump on in IAD when having booked a flight from TPA? It doesn't make sense sometimes, but considering how sensitive some markets are I definitely see where they're coming from.
So would you say they're worthy of being fired?:p

Defintely not from a customer standpoint, but management might view the loss of revenue differently...

The only thing I've ever been able to do in this situation is convert to a one-way and receive a voucher for the difference. I've actually never known anyone to be successful doing what you describe - so that is pretty amazing, that you've succeeded in the past.

One thing you COULD try is, if you booked the new tickets within 24 hours, cancelling them, booking to SFO instead, flying SFO-SEA, then taking the train, the bus or a car to YVR from SEA. It would be end-to-end ticketing, and I don't know that it would necessarily save you money, but it depends...

Were the prior trips (where you were able to make the change) booked in a different booking code, such as a fully refundable one?

You need to familiarize yourself with the fare rules -- the fact that you have omitted this information implies that you have not heretofore paid any attention to it. Leaping to the conclusion that it is somehow the CSR's fault that they won't make the desired change (as suggested by the thread title) is unfair.

I wonder if they were booked in markets where AS competes - AS, for a time, sold all trips as "two one ways" rather than full round trips. UA may have matched fare rules.

Did you do this instance "multiple times" or did you cancel the last legs of your flight before (throw away ticketing)?

Maybe you just had a bad experience with the CSR; why not phone the 1K line again and try to have another CSR help you on this? Or try to speak with a supervisor? Maybe the rules have changed since the last time you've done this, but they'll make an exception for you (since you're 1K). Or if it's a case of the fare code as Kathy mentions, then you may be stuck.

Michael

One question...have there been irrops in the past? Other (UA-caused) problems like schedule changes? Agents are willing to do a lot during irrops, including letting you handle getting to the next leg of your connection - especially for short flights (for example, PHL-EWR, EWR-IAD, etc)

You can certainly convert your ticket to a one-way and keep the remainder as a travel credit. Is this what has happened in the past?

Correct, if the original SFO-SEA fare did not require a roundtrip purchase the OP should have success in getting one segment cancelled. The rationale is that if the OP purchased separate SFO-SEA and SEA-SFO tickets, it would be the same price, and he could no-show on one without impacting the other.

But if this isn't the case and the fare rule does require a roundtrip purchase, then a refare will be required. But since this change in personal travel plans was caused by work travel demands, I can't see why the OP can't just expense these fees to his employer.

Yup I ended up doing just that - i just try and be a good corporate citizen...

First of all, how would you get to NY if you dropped the first leg of the trip? was it cheaper to book the SFO-JFK--LGA-DEN-YVR vs booking the LGA-DEN-YVR as one?

If you are removing the first leg of a ticket, you are almost traveling or departing from a whole new city making a new fare.

The only time I have had segments removed from my ticket was on a MR/DO trip to SFO where i was flying IAD-SFO-LAS-SFO-IAD. When I booked the ticket i only wanted to fly IAD-SFO-IAD but that cost $500 more. I was able to get the SFO-LAS-SFO portion of the ticket removed in the RCC because the SFO-LAS flight was delayed enough to make me miss my fly back to SF for the dinner. So the RCC CSR called a SD and was able to remove the segment with out a problem. I just stayed in SF and went to the Giants game before the DO.