United hides cheapest flights from passengers affected by Coronavirus | Hacker News Reader

United hides cheapest flights from passengers affected by Coronavirus

bookwithcarry.com

230 pointsjrdngonen51 comments

I’m not going to divorce my wife so I can run away with United, but I hope this crew has a lot more than the single example to level these charges I hope they are taking care buckets into consideration (right or wrong, changing this at the IT level can’t be quick or easy). It will be curious to see others replicate this and if so, United’s response, because that would be egregious and certainly something for them to resolve.

Yes, fare classes is the likely explanation. One could say at a cursory glance "but look, they are both Basic Economy!" I would counter with https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly/booking/flight/fare-cla...

> Basic Economy tickets may be booked in various fare classes.

I was able to replicate this scenario with another booking. Definitely not just a lone incident. United sucks.

Would you mind posting your itinerary? Collecting more examples here...

Author here. Didn't realize this blew up on HN...

We don't know the cause of the difference in price, but we're comparing two basic economy tickets here so if there's any fare difference, United should at least clarify to the user why...

United and other airlines are running ads [0] on how users can book w/ confidence and get free changes so IMO, it's just irresponsible to have things like this slip through the cracks-- intentional or not.

Overall, United has been consistently being anti-user with their policies related to coronavirus. For example, making users wait 12 months to get a cash refund [1] if your flight is delayed by them. Not a great look.

[0]: https://twitter.com/tejasmanohar/status/1239332916070473728

[1]: https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/airlines/united/unit...

My hunch: United is only showing you fares of the same class or higher, even if a cheaper class is available

See my reply above at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22588829 why Basic Economy alone is no explanation.

Yeah, this doesn't really pass the sniff test. Can we get details regarding the fare basis codes before/after?

Yeah, I'm not going to say United is some shining beacon of a company, but all I'm seeing here is that somebody representing a company that "book[s] a lot of travel" doesn't seem to understand how fare classes work. I'm not saying it's impossible that United is pulling a fast one here, but this blog post does not show sufficient evidence one way or another. If this showed up in my inbox as a bug report, I'd send it back to QA with a request for more information and reproduction steps.

(Former travel industry person who triaged way, way too many bug reports about fare differences when changing flights)

Put another way: if you bought a flight from X to Y before covid-19, and then you canceled that flight and received a voucher -- that voucher will still only buy you a flight from X to Y, even though prices have dropped.

That seems... totally fair? Why should you be able to buy two flights from X to Y when you canceled only one? I get that prices are now lower, but your price is the same as when you originally bought the flight.

> Why should you be able to buy two flights from X to Y when you canceled only one?

Not all flights from X to Y are created equal. Some are direct, some connect. Some are at more convenient times. Some are on nicer aircraft. Some have more empty seats.

Because that's what they're worth. Live by the market, die by the market.

Well, that's what they are doing: they are effectively only refunding the now lower price of the cancelled ticket. They are just pretending it's still the old price.

yep, and markets change, sometimes very quickly. if United wasn't money grubbing, they wouldn't be holding people hostage to ancient market conditions.

Author here...

Might be misunderstanding, but United is letting you change the route (X to Y) and dates between flights-- that's not the problem. What's messed up here is that United is not showing you the best prices available on the market when you're actually changing your flight, and that's regardless of what route or type of flight you're changing to.

To summarize, one of our users bought a flight and when they went to change it, United showed us the "new flight's price" as something almost twice the actual online rate if you search on United.com or GFlights.

Maybe it is a misunderstanding, but even if that is the case United deserves the bad press for not clearly communicating what they are doing.

Why do they have to be shady about it and just hide them without telling you why?

Maybe a little transparency would buy some goodwill and people would start giving United the benefit of the doubt.

I agree with this. Transparency is key here.

Personally, I think United is pricing flight changes in every way possible to minimize losses for flights sold when Coronavirus was not taken into account – maybe an incompetent management team.

What additionally suggests this is customers who are offered credit for flight changes due to COVID-19 need to wait an ENTIRE year (12-months!) in order see a refund back to original payment source [1].

[1]: https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/airlines/united/unit...

Which they won't see because United will be bankrupt by then.

I have a flight from SYD to NYC on May 2nd.

While there is no entry restrictions yet, I expect it to ramp up soon. When I come back to Australia, I'll be mandated to self-isolate for 14 days.

The Australian Government has warned to reconsider all air travel.

I'm looking to cancel this trip, however it looks like I'll only have the opportunity if reschedules this flight. Even if so, I won't get a refund for 12 months.

I'm not happy about this.

How is this different than the price gouging the hand sanitizer guy did?

People should be asking that question on a lot of life's essentials, where the "provider" removed it from the market only to sell it back at a higher price having added no value.

People should also be reminded that nobody forces them to buy any product for a price that they personally find to be unreasonable.

Yep, like we're seeing now with insulin.

Their needs force them to buy the product. If the only one who has it - because they hoarded it - is somebody offering it at an unreasonable price, then they're forced to buy it at that price.

Hand sanitizer is not an essential need for anyone; soap is more effective. Nobody is forced by their needs to buy hand sanitizer.

Hardly true. Some things are necessary (resulting in grave consequences for non-purchase) and may not have other suppliers or may be cartelled.

Or the Americans for trying to corner the market on a potential vaccine in development.

I’m not sure what the hubbub is about that. The US President’s job description is literally to put America first.

Nowhere in Article II of the Constitution does it say that. It’s as false as the notion that a corporation must maximize return to shareholders as a matter of law.

At most, the Article requires the President to take an oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, but that’s a far cry from requiring he do everything possible to make the USA the most profitable country in the world.

Sometimes putting America first means being an altruistic and cooperative international citizen. PR is real.

In usa when a corporation does it, its legal. When individual does it, they get pinched.

Interesting. I have a few tickets that qualify for free rebooking. My experience was though that every future time slot costs more money. This has left me paralyzed, because I’m not sure if I should just give up on the money, or double down on the very high risk that we’re still avoiding travel for the rest of the year.

It's quite simply not true that every future time slot costs more money.

Try putting those dates in Google Flights and I'm sure that your "$1000" flight is now... $700 or something.

I'm sitting at SFO right now waiting to get on UA 1 back to Singapore so I can go home.

My personal, anecdotal, experience defends United but it's not perfect.

Let's dive in -

1. I was originally set to fly on Apr 5 on UA 1.

2. Obviously I wanted to move it up, so I set it for Mar 24.

3. In the process, I had a premium economy seat bundle that would not automatically transfer.

4. I called, 1 hour on hold. Moved days & seats no new charge. The price of the new flight was cheaper by US$10, I did not see any money back.

5. Today, Mar 15, I decided to go home on tonight's UA 1 flight.

6. Called, 1.5 hours on hold, moved my date and my premium economy seat.

7. I realized I had a bundled extra bag with my old seat. Normally not refundable she said, but she would try. She tried, she got the extra bag refunded no problem, saved me $67.

That whole list boils down to - I lost $10 in price difference but gained $67 back in a refund that I would not normally get.

Overall I'm very happy.

Everyone flying, stay safe and healthy!

What if the difference is based on the fare code that the original ticket was booked under, and the rebooking ticket must be made into the same fare code?

So a lower priced fare code is available but not for the rebooking process?

Yeah, lots of facts missing here. and the facts don't add up. I still think the original itinerary was a round trip - and the total fare being shown is a round trip fare. The author/CTO of the company this "blog" is on has yet to clarify.

If the facts are fudged, this is shameful. Airlines are still terrible companies, but this is shameful.

Even with the same fare class, the tickets sometimes cost more through the change interface on United.com. We've added more detail to our post-- https://bookwithcarry.com/blog/united-cheap-flights-coronavi...

I can assure you that there was no intentional fudging here, and if there's something we're missing, we'd be the first that would like to know it. Due to all the discussion about fare classes, we've also included information in the blog post about problems in the change flow related to that.

I genuinely can’t grasp the nerve required for this to have been decided and put into place. It feels like nothing is too scummy to not happen.

United is THE worst. I hope they go under and another airline places their hub at SFO. They treat their customers like garbage.

They’re not going anywhere. They have EWR/SFO/DEN/ORD/IAD/LAX. I wonder what could cause many of the big companies today to go under, other than their whole product being obsoleted.

Interestingly, the price of that flight is now sitting at $163.40.

https://www.google.com/flights?hl=en#flt=PHL.SFO.2020-03-27....

You now need to compare against the fare offer you receive if you try to change an existing booking made during the waiver period. If the two prices aren’t identical, something is wrong.

How is this virus related? Can anyone confirm this is new behavior or that there is not an explanation?

Being price gouged by airlines is nothing new, this is business as usual.

I think the extensive and permissive rebooking offers are COVID related.

Obviously facts are fudged here. The original itinerary is a round trip that costed 491. With the return leg change, that cost went up to $596 (roundtrip). And they are showing a one way costing 299. This is fake and the company is looking for free publicity.

I'm sorry, but that's blatantly false. The original itinerary is a one-way flight, not a round-trip.

I'll send the original receipt in a few minutes once I scrub all sensitive passenger information.

still waiting ...

Hey! Really sorry for the delay here. We've taken a step back and updated our original post with a much more detailed example and explanation given the response here https://bookwithcarry.com/blog/united-cheap-flights-coronavi...

"We here at Carry book a lot of travel." We'll apparently not. There's literally 100 reasons why this would happen in the normal course of business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com