This news broke over the weekend, but in catching up on what I missed yesterday I thought it was worth reporting this for those who like me had mostly been away from the news for a day or two: United has made its fourth or fifth change this month to its schedule change policy: If your international flight is changed by more than six hours because of schedule changes resulting from government restrictions, you will get a United credit that is valid for one year. If after 12 months have passed you have not used the credit, you can get a refund. This applies retroactively to tickets purchased well before the COVID-19 outbreak.
This new policy is nuts, especially given that many customers purchased their ticket under the previous policy, which provided a refund when a schedule change caused a disruption of 2 hours or more. Gary Leff at View from the Wing suggests that those affected by this policy change might consider filing a chargeback with their credit card issuer if United refuses to give a refund and I am inclined to agree with him.
I should note that I’m probably more sympathetic to the airlines than many travelers right now. That’s easy for me given that I don’t have any flights booked right now, but the fact of the matter is that I do sympathize that there are a lot of ordinary people who are or are going to be out of work, taking unpaid leave, etc. I can appreciate the difficult and unexpected situation in which airlines find themselves at the moment.
But this policy change is horrible. Keeping customer money tied up for a year before giving it back seems wrong. I understand that United would prefer to be in the business of flying than in the business of canceling flights and they would like to preserve cash and maintain their business, but it seems wrong to hang on to money that was exchanged for a specific purpose (a flight from A to B on date XYZ) if they can’t provide the service you purchased. That may not be the airline’s fault, but neither should customer money be tied up for a year because of it. Given the total economic uncertainty in which we are currently living, it is further problematic to expect customers to leave their money with United as a no-interest loan for a year. While I imagine this too shall pass and the legacy airlines will make it out of this, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to give an airline a loan today.
I can’t imagine that this schedule change policy will last. They have already changed the policy multiple times over the past week. I’d bet that this won’t be the last time.
If you’re holding tickets for international travel that is weeks or months away, I’d recommend waiting it out and seeing what happens — no sense in compounding your frustration with hours on the phone waiting to be told something that will likely change with the wind. If your travel dates become imminent and United intends to stick with this policy, filing a chargeback seems like a reasonable next course of action.
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And they are now complaining that their planes will be 20-30% full – any wonder why? Why fly them when there are many other choices? No reason to buy any tickets from UA at all.
i think the real crime are these cringy selfies
Report me to the insta-influencer police. I take full responsibility.
1) bizarre picture and 2) United can make any change to policy it wants. That doesn’t mean it will hold up. If you purchased a ticket under a set of rules, those rules apply to your ticket. Definitely dispute the charge with your cc company. Airlines can implement any rules they want and those rules apply to tickets sold after the change. But, they can’t make that type of change after a ticket has been purchased. Laughable. Just dispute and don’t worry about it.
there are also people who were abusing the lax policies by making tons of new speculative bookings of the lowest fares, and only cancel at last minute, risk free. if you wanna start blaming airlines for their policies, start aiming your fire power at those losers on flyertalk.
Hmm…so, when rules favor the airlines, we are supposed to play ball…but, when airlines need to ease up on rules that favor customers, those customers are “losers?”
It may not be that United just wants to hang on to your money as long as possible. It seems quite likely at this point that they do not have enough money to give all the refunds that are due. Remember cyberrebate?
[…] the end of that time you have been unable to use it, a refund will be provided to your credit card. See our post for more info. It would be surprising if this policy doesn’t change again in the coming days, so I […]
I got 3 out there will wait till 2 weeks before . Remember United could go BK then the Gov bails them out but we LOOSE Hmmm .
CHEERs
and that is a major problem. If they file for bankruptcy, you will not get anything back. It will get tossed out in court.
You never know so avoid . GM went BK but PAID the UAW and Boned everyone else and the GOV said Fine here’s the Money ..
CHEERs
If you are in a situation where you feel you have no other resort than a charge-back, make sure you go in to your reservation and change your registered FF number. Typically you cannot simply delete one already entered, so enter in a star alliance partner number.
This way you reduce your risk of having your MileagePlus account penalized, as has been reported across different sites, for when you do a charge-back.