FlyerTalk Forums - United’s 24-hour cancellation (2024)

Refund already processed to "gift accounting" since October. Where the credit card portion of the refund went is what I need assistance with.

The refund request is usually the best way to get the most qualified front-line team at United to examine your claim. This should be as simple as "card x0123 was tendered for $xxx of ticket 016xxxxx, refund should have been issued in this amount" but you need to get someone qualified to do the necessary accounting forensics. I am skeptical a chat support agent is the person to do this.

If normal channels are exhausted, a DOT complaint is a good way to get United to look at a more senior level, and a chargeback is a good way to get your money.

and potentially faster. Need to do within 120 days of the cancellation.

Stop using chat and call in between 7am-430p central. Ask to be transferred to refunds as you have an issue with your refund request. Have the refund request number, or eTicket or PNR ready so they can pull up the actual activity. Most of chat can't access the sales database that contains the information where the money flowed to. A good chunk of chat is also outsourced, and it sounds like the agents may be misunderstanding what you are trying to get figured out, especially if they keep saying "gift accounting". You can tell 100000% times easier if the person is misunderstanding you if you're talking to them on the phone vs through a text chat.

I booked a Basic Economy flight last night 8pm. It is 6:30pm now - less than 24 hours has past since my booking. Yet when I tried to cancel my reservation, it says the refund will be towrards Future flight credit (FFC) AFTER a Basic Economy cancellation charge of -$199.00?

It looks like from the thread the 24-hour flexible policy is not really 24-hour?

What should I do in this case?

thanks

Did you buy the ticket less than 7 days before departure?

No, it's for mid Feb travel... international flight. Not sure if it make a difference?
During booking, it did say cancel within 24-hour is OK.

*** UPDATE ***

Well, I managed to get it cancelled over the phone with full refund.

I called the UA reservation number (1-800-UNITED-1 (1-800-864-8331)) and was connected in minutes. The lady at the other end said the system indicated that my booking is more than 24 hour, but after checking the ticketing time, confirmed it's still within the 24 hour. She needed to contact their support team and after about 20+ mins finally got the reservation cancelled. She explained the system has incorrect time and required manual checking to override it... .. United???

Anyways I will be keeping an eye on the CC refund which is supposed to come in ~7 business days.

dchobo - glad you got it resolved. Wisdom on here would have said you had to call United to fix this.

I ran into the same issue with a revenue (non-BE) ticket two weeks ago. I was bumping up to the 24 hour mark but was definitely under it. Website refused to refund but rather wanted to issue an FFC. A call to the 1K line sorted that problem out. The 1K agent also said it appeared to be older than 24 hours but then looked at the ticketing time as well.

United might be running on a backup computer to issue tickets which has the wrong timestamp :)

-RM

Thanks and this thread definitely helped! In a way I was lucky not to wait till the last minute of the 24-hour window, which allows me to scan parts of this thread, post a question, and get through to an UA agent. Hopefully this will help others who are in the same predicament.

I have definitely used UA's 24-hour cancellation policy several times over the past years - but mostly canceled the reservations within ~18 hours (I think). In the past, I have also noticed their clock is somewhat messed up. UA used to have a "pay-in-person" option that allows you to hold a reservation till midnight of the 3rd day. But the reservation always get cancelled hours in advance of midnight.

Sadly, time to call.

David

The UA website seems fairly clear - the 24 hour cancellation policy does not apply to tickets booked less than a week before departure.

"United's 24-hour flexible booking policy gives you the freedom to make changes to select reservations within 24 hours of booking and ticketing, without being charged change fees if you made your purchase one week or more before the flight was scheduled to depart. This includes canceling your reservation and requesting a full refund of the ticket price". https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/fly...ticket%20price.

Earlier today I bought a "fully refundable" ticket for a trip I thought I might need to take today. I bought the fully refundable ticket on the assumption that nothing else would be refundable. Turns out I didn't need to fly, so I refunded the ticket. In the flow in the app to request the refund there was this message:

"You're eligible to cancel without paying a fee under our 24-hour flexible booking policy"

My understanding was I was eligible to cancel without penalty because I had a refundable ticket, not because of the 24-hour rule. If I had known for certain that the 24-hour rule applied to tickets bought less than 7 days before departure, I would have bought a cheaper ticket.

So which is it - does the 24-hour cancellation rule apply to tickets bought less than 7 days before departure or not?
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