With United Airlines facing financial uncertainty like it has at no point in company history, United will defer schedule change refunds for a period of one year from date of booking.
I’ve covered the schedule change saga in depth. For years, the policy was that a two hour schedule change allowed a customer to cancel for a full refund.
Earlier in the month, that was changed to 25 hours. After much negative press, including from Live and Let’s Fly, United backed down and compromised at six hours.
But there’s a catch. Reservation agents have been told that if a passenger cannot be rebooked (even if they are not allowed, at the moment, to travel to the Untied States), they will have travel credit valid for one year from date of booking. It is only after that one year from date of booking that cash refunds will be issued.
“Our goal remains to automatically re-book as many customers as possible within 6 hours of their originally scheduled flight. For any customer whose international travel is disrupted by more than 6 hours because of schedule changes resulting from government restrictions, they will retain a travel credit equal to the value of their ticket. That credit can be used towards any flight, to any destination, for 12 months from the time of purchase.
If the customer chooses not to use the credit, they will receive a cash refund at the end of that 12 month period.
Importantly, this new way of helping customers manage through changing flight schedules also applies to residents from other countries who effectively can no longer travel to the U.S. because they would face a 14-day quarantine upon arrival as well as customers impacted more broadly by government-mandated travel restrictions or quarantines.
In addition, this change also maintains our ability to manage our business through this evolving and difficult set of circumstances.”
I think the last line is key. And while I cannot defend the policy, United is in survival mode right now, so part of me cannot blame United for such a policy. Why? Because the bleeding right now is beyond United’s ability to stop it. We know what happens if someone is bleeding and it cannot be stopped…
CONCLUSION
As the situation gets worse, I cannot defend a policy that penalizes a consumer for no fault of their own. But I also understand why United has felt the need to preserve cash as the worldwide air travel situation continues to deteriorate.
United isn’t even issuing travel certificates right now, though. I’ve made multiple changes to reservations in the last few days, and in a few cases, fare differences were to be sent to me via ETC… no dice. If this is a system issue they clearly are in no rush to fix it.
Caveat emptor. Basic tenet of capitalism. United is reinforcing it. Why are people freaking out about this policy. If any of those are Republicans they would be hypocrites, once again.
All airlines are suffering but United is maybe making it worse by CLEARLY making it look incompetent with policy changes every day. That defiantly does not help and making customers even more scared (and maybe flock to it’s competitors for those who are even still flying).
DOT complaint and CC charge back, the end.
So unbelievably ironic – they’re doing this to “manage their business” by making it impossible for their customers to manage their own businesses. They have significantly more ability to manage their cash flow etc than a small business or individual. The amount of pain they’re going to face, in legal bills trying to defend the changes to the contract of carriage alone, is going to be quite something, versus the incredible goodwill they could have earned … recognize this is all catastrophic to their business, employees etc., how is it any different from the rest of us? Terrible.
We have four business class tickets from Orlando the Barcelona to meet a cruise that’s going to be cancelled, that’s a lot of money to be hanging out for a year. And changing our itinerary to go via Newark and leave 4 hours early is with in their window but unfortunately if my son’s graduation from UCF weren’t cancelled that wouldn’t work either.
I think this is illegal within EU. We have flights booked and internal ones too from the UK. We are older. Health may stop us flying next year. We wa t full refunds