Missed this thread and was just surprised when I called to make a change. Huge thumbs-down from me.

Due to abuse by a former coworker, any change fees are out of our own pocket, company won't reimburse them. $100 was tolerable, but no way I will do the $150. Bad move.

You're right - free standby is worth far more. I have never paid a change fee in my life, and don't ever plan to. I fly SFO-LAX frequently, so I make serious use of free standby.

Anecdote noted.

I'm not sure United is as worried about matching other airlines on change fees as it would on other tangibles like fare or saturday night stay restrictions.

I don't like change fees at all, but I don't change leisure travel much at all either (if change fees were that important to me I would try to fly carriers like Jet Blue or Alaska which have always had lower change fees). Again, they will only revoke this if they feel that bookings are dropping or if they are losing market share because of it.

Hate to say it (and maybe this will sound like hindsight is 20/20) but I'm not surprised one bit at the change fee increase. Geez - I remember when $50 felt like a huge sting.

And please don't tell me for a second that the change fees are to cover lost of an unused seat or to cover the costs involved with a date change or reissue. Overbooking formulas already account for customers changing at the last moment. The phone fee is what $15? Changing/reissuing a ticket is not as costly for UA as a RR agent creating a new record from scratch!

I still think the legacies would do better to follow the LCCs on change fees. Make it significant enough that low fare customers aren't changing a ticket every day leading up until travel, but low enough that people will feel encouraged to use it and generate revenut (instead of just holding customers hostage to either pay it or not fly at all...I mean how many times have we just thrown a ticket away because the change fee was more than the face value of the remaining coupons and just flown another carrier on a new ticket to get home?).

And yes - I believe reissue / redeposit for award tickets will increase at some point to $150 to match, because "our customers told us they wanted consistency in how we gouge them when travel plans change"

That's one of the few routes where free standby is really helpful. SFO-CAK - not so much.

...and nobody's matched. Not even US, who usually initiates.

I don't even check United's web site anymore. I just book on Southwest. That was at the $100 change fee level. Now, even more so at the $150 change fee level. I'm looking mostly at DEN-LAS, so what is the difference between WN and TED? I'm on the A-list with WN and most of the time I get seat 12F which has WAY more leg room than any E+ seat. Check www.seatguru.com to see what I mean. Other times, I get an open middle a lot more frequently than I used to on TED.

UA lost $542 million last quarter. Southwest made a profit. So UA raises their change fees while Southwest has none. If next quarter UA loses $750 million, might they not try a $50 change fee? Then they'd only lose $250 million. Get rid of the change fee and they would break even!

They have lost so much business to Southwest with Southwest's entry into Denver, it isn't even funny. And now, with the Southwest A-list, the rewards are so much better than United Premier. Like I said, I don't even check United anymore. I need my 32 flights on WN to make A-list.

United screwed up with TED. Now they are screwing up more with the $25 second bag and $150 change fee.

Given that the $25 bag fee affects only non-elites, whom UA isn't really afraid of "losing" (they tend to be price-driven and therefore fickle), and given that a number of other legacies have matched it, I don't think they "screwed up" at all. The change fee affects all, but then again, I've never paid a change fee... and given that they instituted it only 5 days ago, it is way too early to tell whether or not they "screwed up" on that issue.

As for Ted... UA may or may not have screwed up, but I'd rather fly Ted than WN, because I vastly prefer MP over RR, I prefer assigned seating, and E+ offers me sufficient legroom to be satisfied. I'm but one example, but I really have no problem with Ted. (Then again, I don't buy F.)

That is not the important question however. Have you ever kept a sub-optimal itinerary to avoid having to pay a change fee? That is the more revealing question. I certainly have. My family has flown ill rather than fork over $100 X 4. We've turned down other options in life because we were locked into flights and did not want to pay a "junk" fee. And I've even paid a change fee once before.

I'd gladly trade free standby for no change fee. And if one is not flying a route with high daily frequency (like the typically trotted out SFO-LAX with hourly departures extreme example), it's even more obvious.

Of course you would, since no change fee pretty much gives you free standby... or do you mean you'd be OK with paying the fare difference (which can be substantial, especially for last-minute changes) as long as there was no change fee?

I personally have never deliberately kept something that was a "problem" for me to avoid the change fee. If I have, it wasn't a big enough problem.

Regardless, the change fee has been around for a loooong time. My previous post wasn't about whether having any change fee at all was a mistake, but rather that increasing the change fee from $100 to $150 may or may not be a mistake - it's way too early to tell.

Why?

Because it's only been 5 days! You can't determine anything about whether customers will flee or not care in 5 days, especially not in a highly variable industry like air travel. More importantly, UA hasn't even advertised this change to the public at large, which means that few people beyond FT probably know about this at all.

It will take at least a month, probably an entire quarter or longer, to determine whether revenue has fallen compared to historical numbers, and even then it may not be due to the change fee alone (or at all). Any numbers gleaned from shorter periods, like only 5 days, are meaningless... not to mention that we don't even have those numbers, anyway.

Moreover, FT is not a representative sample by far, so even if everyone here hates the change (which is not the case, since a number of people in this thread have opined that they don't really care), it's not representative of the public at large.

So, while it's certain that a number of FTers think that this is a mistake, the market at large has not yet spoken, nor will its message be heard or understood for quite some time.

I fled at the $100 level as soon as there was an option to flee to (Southwest came to Denver). So did 1000's of other people per day -- just multiply the number of Southwest departures per day at Denver times about 100 or 120 people per plane. They are over at Southwest instead of United or Frontier either because of the price or the change fee (because, as many have said above, it can't be for the open seating, A-list privs, friendly FA's and GA's, etc.)

The 50% increase only increases my satisfaction with Southwest.

I paid United's rip-off change fee a few times and few on sub-optimal flights a few more times. I also paid more than I had to for some tickets because I couldn't book them at the lowest price. With Southwest, I can book at the lowest price and then *if* my plans change, pay the fare difference. I can even book multiple alternatives at the lowest price, fly the one that actually works for me, cancel the rest and reuse the funds without penalty.

If you book two tickets at $79 each one way, fly one and cancel one, you have saved $50 over having to wait until your plans are firm and then you have to pay $129 over at United. The cancelled flight then becomes ticketless travel funds to be used anytime within the next year.

While I will grant you that a RR won't get you to Europe or Austrailia, MP has its challenges on these trips as well. I keep looking at Austrailia on MP and there are NO seats available in business class for 110,000 miles per seat. There is a limited supply at 220,000 per seat. So, while United promises these nice trips, actually getting them at the saver rate is almost as hard as getting them on RR.

Meanwhile, at RR, you can get a domestic round trip ticket (figure that is worth about $160-$200) for as little as 4 round trip flights (about 5,000 miles DEN-LAS-DEN) if you also do 4 Hertz car rentals during the QUAD promotion. That is a value of 4 cents per mile. Compare that to United, where you'd need at least 9 round trips with 300 miles per car rental and some type of double mile promotion. (9 x 2 x 2 x 629 + 9 x 300 = 25,452).

another thing that makes no sense. i just booked a flight using miles, but the routing was IAD-ONT/LAX-DCA. so obviously i can't book it online. so i asked them to waive the $15 processing fee for calling in, and of course they say no. how come .bomb won't let me book this online?

I'd be okay with paying the fare difference as being the new rule. I just wouldn't partake of it!

But to be honest I'd rather see another $10 or $20 pp fare hike across the board and eliminate change fees and keep free space-available standby.

Seriously, unless one is on a high-frequency route standby is of limited value anyway.