Joe may have uncovered a deceptive policy at United Airlines that’s screwing over customers. Here’s how it works. If you’ve got an economy ticket and the only seats available are in Economy Plus, but you didn’t spring for the extra Economy Plus fee, you’re asked if you would like to pay the upgrade fee for economy plus seating. If you decline to upgrade, they seat you there anyway. Sounds pretty sketchy to me. Here’s Joe’s story:
When my family were ticketed for an overseas flight at Boston’s Logan International, the clerk processed our tickets but then asked an unexpected question: “Would you like to upgrade to seats with more legroom?” When I asked how much that would cost, he responded “$231.” I declined, since my flight was being paid for by my employer and the upgrade would have come out of my pocket. After a moment of discussion with another clerk, he processed our tickets. We received our tickets and proceeded to the gate for the first leg of our flight.
While waiting for the weather to clear at Dulles to continue our trip, I was attracted to a display from United Airlines that was playing on an LCD TV at the gate. United was showing off their “Economy Plus” seating option, which featured additional leg room in a specific section of the plane, in this case rows (Boeing 777) 17 through 26. (See http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/United_Airlines/United_Airlines_Boeing_777-200_2.php) I pulled out my boarding pass to check my seat assignments, and my entire family was seated in Row 18, within the “Economy Plus” area, even though I had declined to pay the additional fee.
At this point, I recalled the short conversation between the two clerks at Logan, which I had not paid much attention to at the time, but now made sense. My clerk asked the other clerk what “they are supposed to do when the traveler declines.” The other clerk replied that “the company makes them ask, but if they say no he just books them anyway.”
It is now clear to me that Economy was already full, and that additional Economy passengers were being seated in Economy Plus, whether or not they paid to upgrade, which means that the poor schmucks that were booked and ticketed weeks earlier (I made reservations only twelve days prior) for Economy Plus likely paid an upgrade price for the privilege, where I did not. Or, other passengers like myself who were being seated in Economy Plus anyway were subjected to an attempt by the airline to gouge us out of a few more bucks. That sure doesn’t seem right to me.
Best Regards,
Joe S.
Economy Plus Page [United]
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@Franklin Comes Alive!:
Ever get book and pay for a sub-sub compact and receive a full size Caddy? Yep, happened to a co-worker when he flew into town to visit our office…. he got the last car on the lot… the Caddy.
I worked at a hotel where this same type of thing would happen. We were forced to offer an room upgrade for $69 even when we were sold out of regular rooms and the person would be getting the upgrade whether they paid for it or not.
That said, I recently flew to S.E. Asia and back on United. I got a free upgrade to United Plus on one leg of the flight there, and had to sit in regular economy for the other leg. Even though its only an extra 5 inches of room it made a world of difference. Regular economy for 13 hours is TORTURE! On the way back I was willing to pay whatever it cost to get in the United Plus section.
For short flights I probably won’t bother paying the extra but for long flights its absolutely necessary.
Exactly like getting upgraded to First Class for free instead of paying. You are not guaranteed it unless you pay.
Why is everyone calling this a “free upgrade.” It’s not an upgrade it’s just one more thing that used to be free but they now try to charge you for. It’s like that providing oxygen is an upgrade, like not having the flight attendant periodically jab you with a cattle prod is an “upgrade.”
It’s still coach. Until there’s SRO flights or Steerage, it doesn’t get any lower. Crowing about getting a “free upgrade” to coach plus is both missing the point and buying into the airines’ gouging tactics.
@ludwigk: Their comments were “disemvoweled” for being inappropriate. From what I could read, they both said they saw nothing wrong with UA’s practice here.
Had terrible experience flying United to Rome from LAX. Gate attendants tried to sell upgrade to economy plus, didn’t bite, only gave us a seat assignment as the gate doors were closing. Even worse in Rome coming back. Will NEVER fly United again. Ever.
Reconstructing my vowel-deficient post from above:
What’s the OP complaining about? The airline could have seated the family in regular economy and separated, and said too bad for checking in later than others but, by the way, you can be seated together for $231. Instead they offered an upgrade for the usual price — it is not the check-in agent’s job to give away the store — and kept the family seated together without requiring an upcharge.
When this happens with rental cars I’m a little more miffed, since I reserve the car size I want based on how I’ll be using it. “Free” upgrade to a car that consumes more gas doesn’t make sense for the long solo drive from the rprt to my parent’s home, for instance.
@krunk4ever: The “deception” part sort of comes in in the situation we had. We tried to check in online before our flight only to find that all the regular economy seats were full. The only seats shown as available were upgraded seats.
It’s deceptive in the sense that we’ve become accustomed to being allowed to check in and select seats 24 hours in advance. We were forced to either pay for the upgrade, or accept the uncertainty of not having assigned seats (and, I might add, not knowing what this would mean for our flight – was it overbooked? Was there a chance we wouldn’t get a seat?) even though we had of course paid for our tickets and were expecting to fly out the next morning.
We don’t usually take United, so obviously our first reaction is that the plane is full, except for these upgraded seats which we didn’t particularly want to pay for. (Like another commenter wrote, these flights were billed to a client who wouldn’t appreciate the appearance of “upgrade” no matter how small the cost.)
I think it is deceptive to show all the seats in your class as booked (even though, as we found out, the plane was not full) and to *imply* that you needed to upgrade in order to get a seat. If people are in fact being left at the gate for refusing to upgrade, then it is hugely deceptive to sell X number of economy seats and allow people to think that buying an economy ticket at the advertised price actually means they’ll get to fly. I agree that offering the security of the upgrade for the fee even when they intend to upgrade you anyway may just be “business tactics.” But, if your choice comes down to “pay more or don’t fly” then that’s bait and switch, especially when you’re within 24 hours of flying and could have booked your ticket weeks/months in advance (as we had).
Since we always have several connections to get to/from our destinations, we can’t risk being refused to fly because they miscalculated how many booked fliers will later pay for an upgrade. Now that we know this is standard operating practice at United, we will choose to fly with an airline that actually provides seats when you have, in good faith, paid for them well in advance.
I honestly don’t understand why Joe needs to be so cynical.
United has an Economy Plus class that gives more leg room and costs more – that’s no secret. Since the outset Joe should have taken it for granted that he he’s not supposed to be getting something he didn’t pay for, and should United decide to give him a little something more than what he’d paid for, that to me is totally a favor and the company’s prerogative.
United did him a favor by putting him on a flight where a seat is available instead of bumping him off to a following flight. Would he rather wait for the next flight on the general principle that people who want to get more leg room should pay more and if not, United is running a scam?
Let’s say United did choose not to give him that Economy Plus seat, it would seem that Joe would have complained about a delay United had caused him anyway.
People have debated about the fact that this isn’t a Business Class upgrade and this isn’t a hotel etc. To me these are all irrelevant.
What to me is the point here is that you get what you paid for and this is the general business principle applied everywhere for everything. And if you do occassionally get what you didn’t pay for, that’s an exception rather than the rule and the company concerned totally has the right not to give that away to you.
Everybody knows that there’s a limited number of Economy Plus seat, so it’s a twisted logic to argue that United was wrong to be asking people more for E Plus in the first place for it’s explicit from the story that United would do this only when there’s no other regular Economy seats available.
All airlines occassionally upgrade Economy passengers to business class when no Economy seats are available. Does this mean all airlines are running a scam for charging frequent Business Class flyers more than the Economy Class on a regular basis?
This whole case, to me, is a non-issue from the start and I honestly don’t know why it’s even worth being published here.