Horrible experience with United Airlines

[SecondAttempt]

For weeks now I have been trying to book my flights to Europe for this summer. It has been a little complicated because I'm doing an open-jaw ticket and it involves 2 airports that United has limited service to (CPH and ARN). I am not restricting to United but I do want to stick with Star alliance.

When I started to try to do this about a month ago I could only find ridiculous schedules/routings (multiple overnight layovers each way) and crazy prices ($6000+ for economy). I finally resorted to making a segment by segment reservation making my own routing.

That worked and last night I got a decent routing through Frankfurt with transatlantic flights operated by Lufthansa. Price was $2200 RT. But when I tried to book the website would not let me and told me to call customer service. After more than an hour on hold, the customer abuse agent I got who had a very heavy Indian accent told me I would have to pay $5700 to book . What? I had an offer from United that I accepted online. That constitutes a contract. I was fuming.

This morning I tried again avoiding Lufthansa (I have always had great experiences with Lufthansa). I was able to book online for $1600 RT. So it all worked out in the end but I am still extremely annoyed with the bait and switch they tried to pull.

All prices are per person.

 

[rodi]

Were you trying to book directly from airline sites? Or were you using flights.google.com or kayak.com or similar?

I will often "What if" on flights.google.com then play around to see if I can get it less expensive.

 

[brett]

We have had issues from time to time. Other than covid, we typically fly to Europe every fall and SE Asia/Australia in the winter.

Our flights to Europe are always open jaw. It may be into Athens, home from Paris or London. Into Lisbon, out from Faro or Barcelona. In to Vienna, then Malta, Sicily, and home through BCN.

We typically looked for the best transatlantic flight to a hub that is also served by many low cost European airlines. We are very spontaneous travelers. Last time we were not certain if we would be spending our last two weeks in Cyprus, Israel, or Morocco. So a ticket home from London was perfect. We ended up in Cyprus with a very low cost ticket back to LHR to catch our flight home.

We gave up trying to get good and convenient fares/connections into many of the less busy airport from the major airlines. Besides....we have found that the prices of regional air on regional air sites is much less expensive that buying a connecting ticket on a major via a major hub. Often the larger airlines in Europe that service the smaller airports are extremely competive. We have had excellent regional fares in Europe by booking BA, TAP, AirMalta, Aegean/Olympic, etc. We use local in country web sites as well as googleflights, itmatric, skyscanner, etc.

One other thing. We have sometimes found that buying air on an in county website is less expensive that using booking site. Often by 30 percent. We have found this to be the case in Turkey, Greece, Italy, Mexico, and parts of South America. Same flight, same time.

We book direct with the airline whenever possible. Sometimes it is less expensive to use a travel site. As a rule....we avoid United Airlines transatlantic and transpacific flights whenever possible. We are Star Alliance but will select a Lufthansa, AC, Swiss, etc before in preference to a United flight.

We doing the same at the monent. Looking at fares to Morocco, how best to get there, what provides the most flexiblity, cost, etc. We flew to Portugal last May on TAP. Our flight to Madeira, one way, was $150. less than a flight to Lisbon even though we changed planes in Lisbon. So we went to Madeira first since it was on our list. Then another $50. to fly to Lisbon a week later on easyJet.

 

[njhowie]

But when I tried to book the website would not let me and told me to call customer service.
.
.
That constitutes a contract. I was fuming.

It's a contract only after you have paid. You had not paid yet from what I see, so there was no contract. Most websites have verbiage which explicitly says this.

What the website may display one minute to the next is almost meaningless.

 

[oiseux]

I do the same as Rodi --- work out routings and prices on flights.google.com, skycanner and some other flight portals to find the best priced routing. Then I replicate using the target airlines using United. Their website engine seems to capitalize on their mileage members by hiding lower priced routines, especially with partners. .

 

[SecondAttempt]

Were you trying to book directly from airline sites? Or were you using flights.google.com or kayak.com or similar?

I will often "What if" on flights.google.com then play around to see if I can get it less expensive.

This was directly on United.com! Never had problems with that site until now.

And I was not trying to book award tickets or anything unusual, just a regular cash-paying customer. The guy I ended up talking to said the issue was that a partner airline was involved. This would have been Lufthansa which I have always found to be a great airline. And what I finally booked also involves a star alliance partner (SAS) as well as another airline that is not star alliance for one flight in Europe so I'm not convinced he was correct.

There was also a $400 "international surcharge" included in the price. I do not ever recall paying anything like this. The last time I went to Europe was in 2019 and our tickets were about $1600. Remember, we are flying from Hawaii so they will always be more than most of you would pay from the mainland. So I did not find a $200 increase to be unreasonable given gas prices and general inflation in 4 years. But I really want to find out about the international surcharge!

ETA: I just looked at my receipt for Houston to Europe in 2019 - no international surcharge and that ticket was actually a little more. But it involved several more flights within Europe so that probably explains the higher price.

 

[SecondAttempt]

We book direct with the airline whenever possible. Sometimes it is less expensive to use a travel site. As a rule....we avoid United Airlines transatlantic and transpacific flights whenever possible. We are Star Alliance but will select a Lufthansa, AC, Swiss, etc before in preference to a United flight.

Lol, I was trying to get us on Lufthansa metal across the pond! In 2019, we had a Lufthansa flight home from Frankfurt after flying from Rome. In Rome they had put me in business class and my partner in the back of the plane even though we were on the same reservation and had the same status. At the gate in Frankfurt I went up and asked to be seated together in economy. Instead they put us both in business class! I've had similar good experiences on Lufthansa through the years, usually when traveling on business. So I definitely like them.