Constant Discounts on United Door-to-Door Baggage? Not Doing so Well? No One Buying?
 

I haven't heard much on this forum in recent months on United's Door-to-Door baggage service. Few seemed to be even interested in that joke of a scavenger hunt offer , and no one has posted with any experiences using Door-to-Door baggage service. Furthermore, in addition to the e-mails I receive advertising lowered rates in the service, I see consistent deals for trying the service on .bomb. The current advertisement on .bomb offers as 55% off for the month of February, the highest money-off offer I have seen. At first, it seemed the baggage service discounts only applied to elite members, but now, UA seems to have extended the deals to everyone.

Now, I don't have an MBA, but with so many offers for discounts on the service on .bomb, as well as through e-mail, leads me to believe that A., either the service is not performing as well as UA thought, after someone tried it, or B., people simply aren't interested in trying such a service (personally, I think it's overpriced and superfluous, but I could see how some people might want/need it). Moreover, UA's FT forum is usually a good indicator and barometer of UA's services, and because I have not seen any reports of using the service (based on my own searches of the forum), I'm guessing few have tried it. Thoughts? Does anyone have any experiences to share? Can we assume that Door-to-Door baggage is not performing well, and it might simply be another idiotic "Travel Option by United?"

I could never see myself using this service. The tag line for this "travel option" is "United is the first to save you time and money with this simple and convenient service". I don't see how this could save anyone any money unless they're a GM/3P/2P checking 3+ items or a 1P/1K/GS checking 4+ pieces. In one of those scenarios the flyer in question would be saving ~ $25 by using the FedEx service vs. paying the excess bagge fee of $125 to UA at check-in. Add to that the limitations of 50lbs or less and only available for domestic travel and you have a very unappealing service.

It just seems like a very superfluous service. I guess if I was loaded I might spend the cash just so I could travel light to/from the airport, but at the same time you're looking at an extra day or more of being away from your luggage.

It just seems like a real discretionary expense and unfortunately UA just picked a bad time to roll it out when so many people are watching their discretionary spending.

Well unless your a non-status passenger I can't see using this when checking bags is free and most FF don't check bags at all. So now their effective market is the leisure traveler who as we all know shops based on what flight is $0.01 cheaper on Orbitz so adding this cost seems unlikely. I would bet there's little to no business travelers who will be using this. If one of my people tried to expense this I'd print out the expense report and use it to administer the death by a thousand cuts.

This was a dumb idea, launched at a dumb time, I suppose the only saving grace was it likely didn't cost UA much money, in fact I'd almost bet FedEx paid UA something for the exposure.

What IS performing well these days? You've read a newspaper lately, right?

I know of one person at another company who uses the service religiously. She's a 1K who used to check overpacked bags on every trip and now sends them with door-to-door instead. I have no idea whether she picks up the tab or gets it expensed.

The option may be "idiotic" to you but if it's good for some passengers and (presumably) not costing UA any money, then what's the harm?

This reminds me of another thread where some posters said they wanted US kicked out of Star Alliance. What's so bad about having options?

How could it not cost UA any money? You think the marketing materials create themselves?

I have no idea how the partnership works with FedEx. Do you?

No, but the mere fact that there is a partnership suggests that it isn't free. These things take time, research, resources, etc. to cultivate.

Last I read, United didn't pay a dime for Hemispheres, yet there it is in the seatback pocket of every flight.

It seems entirely plausible that FedEx approached United, offered to cover all the expenses, and pay United a modest cut of the profits.

My entire point is that I'm not assuming plausible = presumably. You said presumably. I'm not sure that's warranted.

BTW, I'm not sure that "not costing a dime" and costless are exactly the same. I know for a fact that UA hires people to work on Hemispheres. Those people get a salary. That cuts into the "profit" (if there is one) and thus has a cost.

My guess is that FedEx is getting a discounted rate on renting cargo space on UA planes. Doesn't seem like that would be too far fetched on certain routes.

There was a page in a recent article of Money that compared the rates of sending luggage via 3rd party. The UA/Fedex rate was about $50 cheaper than the straight up Fedex rate. (150 vs 200 or something like that).

I don't think we've seen anyone talk about it here because most of us qualify for free luggage checking. But, for a large percentage of the population, they must pay..what is it now, 50 dollars a bag? more for extras? A small family could probably afford loading up two large bags and shipping them before hauling 6 small/med ones. For my family, I can't even imagine that being a possibility... but there must be some research and statics somewhere about how many bags certain people check.

Also, consider this: the more baggage that can be offloaded to another carrier, the more space is available for cargo. win-win for UA when someone takes them up on that offer... no?

While I would agree that the concept is innovative the price makes it far from attractive.

Unless you're loaded or you can expense the $100 fee I just don't see this as a popular alternative. I am reasonably certain that I will never utilize this service.

Also, think about it from this perspective: UA has such low regard for its ability to make sure that your bag arrives with you on your flight that it encourages you to pay more to ship it via 3rd party instead.

It's touted as a 'convenience' but in reality it just off-loads work from UA onto somebody else. And YOU pay for the priviledge of saving UA money.

I'm not sure it is either, but until the agreement is made public, we'll never know. Rest assured that next time, I will use the word "possibly."

Meanwhile, my entire point was some customers benefit from the service and there do not appear to be any negative ramifications to the non-participants.

And it's clearly not possible (there's that word!) that United is being reimbursed for the cost of those employees, right?

Not sure what your point is, and no, I don't read because I don't know how. :(

You have a sample the size of an electron here - one person is not going to make or break, necessarily, the service, or provide a good indicator as to how it is performing.

Again, not quite sure what your point or relevance is, here. You seem to be taking a the larger of idea of "having options" and making an extremely hazy connection to having an option to ship your bags because someone wanted to kick US out of Star.

I see it as another service offered, and some may well utilize the service. In Germany the rail system does something similar and I have many older relatives who embraced the service.

I did just discover something that disturbs me however! There is a 'loophole' to UA checked bag fees.

Apparently when one uses the airline check in desk at a Walt Disney World resort, one is not charged check bag fees, even if one does not have an exemption.

My fear is that any method of saving a penny on some Disney message boards creates a feeding frenzy. I need UA to collect that revenue because I need UA to continue to fly. Many of the passengers fully expected to pay, and were ready to pay, but through UA's contract with the local baggage handler they are not being charged.