United Airlines
On the United Airlines Website you can select "Book Award Travel" when you are attempting to make a reservation. There is a flight pair from Sydney Australia to Los Angeles connecting through Aukland on Air New Zealand, a United partner airline.
These flights come up frequently as available, in Business Class from Aukland to Los Angeles (Coach from Sydney to Aukland) and the cost is 80,000 points and a small amount of fees and taxes.
When you attempt to book these flights you can get all the way to the final page where you select "Purchase" and you get an error message with the phone number of their website support. I spent 2 hours on the phone with one of their agents and then a Supervisor. Ultimately they told me there was nothing they could do and to try back again in 48 hours.
I have tried back many times now, found the same flights, and keep getting the same error message. I have called and spoken with their Customer Service and written a lengthy letter explaining the issue. In my mind this is the definition of False Advertising if you offer a service and simply cannot provide it. I received a letter back from United Airlines where they admit that this is out of their control. Again, the definition of False Advertising to offer a Goods or Services that you simply cannot provide. It makes them look "Good" because 80,000 points is a good offer for this flight but it's a ruse.
I have multiple screen shots that show the date and time, the flight pair, the mileage offer and the error code. Unfortunately I see that I can't send documentation on this website.
I suggested to United that they could either offer me a "Raincheck" for these flights and then find out why the error code keeps coming up or, more logically, offer me a similar flight on a United flight which they absolutely have control over. They have daily non-stops from Sydney to Los Angeles and you can often find them in Business Class for 70,000 points, 10,000 points less than the offer they can't fulfill. They have repeatedly refused to follow this course of action either.
The airlines have gained notoriety in the past decade for their business practices. One of those practices is to simply tell you there is nothing they can do. They leave people sitting on the tarmac for hours, kick them off of flights for no good reason, and I'm sure the list is much longer. The point being the "I'm sorry there is nothing I can do excuse" is simply not valid.
The Supervisor for website support told me she was going to report this error. That was a week ago and the flights are still showing up. Again, I received a letter from United where they admit they simply can't offer those flights reliably and, in fact, they don't seem to be able to offer them at all. I spoke with Air New Zealand, the partner airline that the flights would be on and they had no idea why United could not fulfill that offer.
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