Overbookin Question...
 

Hello, I booked a UA Flight for the 08/06, took a refundable tikcet,
and then modified it to the 07/06 thru the web site (change failed) and
then thru an agent - So Far so good...

The flight is a codeshare with US Airways, Which on the airport took them
like 30 minutes to find the reservation (seems United changed the reservation
but left the other one too).

And i was notified the flight is overbooked and i cannot get a place on it,
I cannot be refund on the ticket (in United it was refundable) and was offered
a different flight with stops (Had to reject as i will miss the meeting i am
flying to).

Spending an hour on the phone with United didnt helped much, They
blamed US Airways, US Airways then Blamed then - I even managed
to make both talking using my phone but nada...

What is the policy in the US regarding such mistakes?
United didnt gave me refund (they claim the ticket change to a day before
moved it to non refundable ticket (was not mentioned anywhere!))
And they are "checking" regarding using the sum i paid for booking
any other flight i want in the next year.



Thanks,
Ebzed.

1stly when dealing with the US please for dates use Month/Day and not Day/Month like in Israel and Europe

If you in fact have a res for a flight that is Oversold and they cant give youa seata ssignment that may not be a problem. As most US carriers will alow only say 66% of their seats to be preassigned the rest will be assigned at the airport day of. So I suggest making sure you get there real early to check-in.

If you get there and there arent any seats left and everyone shows up , you will be considerted an IDB and they will have to Compenstate you for being Bumped. Although before IDBing anyone they will ask for Volunteers who they have to give less to in order to fly later on.

Now if US claims you were never on the Flight as a Confirmed Passenger bout all you do is hope that enough people misconnect, dont show etc etc so that all those Confirmed get on and still there are some Empty seats at which case they might handle you as a SBY

If you arent a Confirmed pass and need to get to where you heading, Id look into making another res with another Carrier and either getting a Full refund or a voucher for the full amount towards a future trip

It depends who screwed up.

When you changed to the US flight, did you get a new receipt?

The whole deal was via united, when changing the flight it was also thru united and i got a new reciept, Its a codeshare between United and USAirways (flight operated by USAirways).

The USAirways lady didnt understood how united sold me the flight while
at the time of the change it was already overbooked.

I hope i will get the refund or the voucher (it was not a cheap one!)
And next time i will make sure to book directly on whoever do the flight,
It will be probably safer.

Thanks for the answers,
Ebzed.

Since you have a new receipt, provided you attempted to check in on itme, you can claim that you were involuntarily denied boarding (IDBed) by US. If you can prove this, basically they owe you 2 x the one way fare (max $800) in cash.

In addition since they did not fly you, you are due a full refund of your ticket, or if you paid more for a new ticket or suffered other inconvenience, perhaps damages for refusing to fly you.

How were you notified of the overbooking situation where your ticket was suddenly "no good" ? That's not clear. Was it at the airport? Your ticket purchase was confirmed so you were owed a seat -- if they didn't provide it to you, you are due something - potentially a lot if they screwed this up as badly as they seem to have done.

As far as going from a refundable to non-refundable ticket - you are usually better off refunding the first and buying a new one since there are many stories of screw ups such as this where they didn't keep the refundable aspect of the ticket in place with the change, solely looking for the cheapest alternative on a new routing.

ps Post dates however you wish - using the month written out could alleviate any US/Europe, etc confusion, but this is an international board so the different representations do occur regularly.

If this is true, then this is 100% United's fault. Period.

Just because UA issued a new receipt does not mean that they actually issued the OP a valid ticket for a flight on US. There is a very good possibility that UA screwed up and booked a flight that shouldn't have been booked. Not saying this did in fact happen but its a definite possibility.