Blogarithms

A few months ago I booked a UAL round-trip flight for my wife and myself from San Francisco to Maui and used Mileage Plus miles for First-Class upgrades. A while later we decided to extend the trip, but when we called United to change the return flight they told us we had to pay a $100 fee for each leg including the outbound flight, which we weren’t changing. $400 total, so I told them to forget it. Oh, and we would have lost the upgrades even for the flight we weren’t changing. I figured I’d just get to Maui and make the change after I arrived. No way, I assumed, they would charge me to change the inbound flight we’d already completed.

Today I called from Maui to make that change, and while they didn’t want to charge me to change the SFO-OGG leg, they told me I’d have to pay the $100 change fee plus the airfare difference ($424) for a total for the two of us of $1,048. Again, I told ‘em to forget it. That’s more than I paid for the round trip to begin with.

But two hours later, on a whim, I called back and was quoted only $175 each ($350 total) for the two of us. Nearly $700 less expensive than earlier this afternoon and $50 cheaper than a few months ago. Needless to say, I took them up on the offer before the agent in India could discover she’d made a mistake or something. United is totally whacked