United Airlines Will Now Allow You To Combine Electronic Travel Certificates
I may have been living under a rock and missed this one. But, apparently United changed their procedures recently to allow more than one electronic travel certificate to be applied to the same reservation.
The agent I spoke with said it was a new policy started within the last month. To be sure, this doesn’t apply to most folks. Electronic travel certificates are issued for a handful of reasons:
- Customer cancels and rebooks a flight, doesn’t use the entire amount of old ticket.
- Voluntary denied boarding (you offer to take a different flight in exchange for a voucher).
- Problem with your flight. Though less frequent nowadays, United used to hand out a ton of vouchers for mechanical or other in-flight issues.
The problem with these vouchers was that you could only use one for each reservation. That meant keeping track of them in some form or fashion. And, if you had multiple people traveling plus multiple vouchers, that might necessitate separate records. That’s a bit of a pain in the butt for things like Economy Plus seating assignments for family members if they don’t have the same status as you. Agents could help with most of these items by cross-referencing records, but it was a bit of a pain.
Just Pick Up The Phone
Now, United can combine the vouchers into one. It requires calling reservations. It also requires the reservations agent to call Special Services, which can mean a lengthy hold time. But, it’s a nice plus for those of us who travel frequently and end up with multiple vouchers.
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wow – this couldn’t have been better timing. I have 3 vouchers that are going to expire and would love to combine them all for one trip. I will definitely be calling today. Thanks!
How easy is to redeem these travel certificates? Are there a lot of restrictions during the high seasons or do the flights have only a limited amount of seats to use them?
I’m asking because United is offering me those or an amount in money that is less than the certificates…
Thanks
G
Guillermo, travel certificates are pretty much just like cash, but can only be redeemed for flights on United’s website or through their call center. If you know you’ve got some United flying coming up, I’d take the certificates.
Yahoo, I have a bunch.
How about if there are two issued to my wife and I? Can I combine these with different names?
Update: I called twice and they told me that they can’t combine partially used vouchers. They have to be unused. That was disappointing, but still better than nothing.
Hawaii, that is disappointing.
Kevin, not sure. I’ll see what I can find out.
I have one certificate expiring 5/31/18 and the other expiring 6/19/18. Will United allow me to use the 6/19/18 when combining them? Thx
Nancy, they should let you combine two with different dates. They did so for me and both assumed the date with the most amount of time to redeem. In your example, 6/19
HawaiiDreaming was apparently told that they could not combine partially used certificates. I just called and they did combined one full and one partial.
That is great to hear! I wonder if they changed that or whether I was given bad information by multiple agents. Either way, that is wonderful!
I’m fairly certain I was able to combine a partially used cert.
Great information! I was able to combine 3 certificates for 3 different family members and use all for one ticket.
Jim, I combined TEN recently. So much better than it used to be.
wow really? i’m thinking of combining 4. is there a special # i need to call to do thisnon united? thanks!
Praveen, any reservations agent should be able to help. I call the 1K line, but they need to get a supervisor to complete the task.
Thanks for your advice, I just combined 8 (all family members) using the general reservations line.
Hilario, great news! Glad the information was helpful.