United decides to screw loyal Australian customers

[mgason]

I am a many times 1k, Million Miler, loyal United customer. Prior to Covid I had earned 480 Plus Points.
I am an Australian and I recently received this response to a request for an extension of my hard earned Plus Points..."there will be no extension on the current PlusPoints. To be fair to members who have earned new PlusPoints this year, the expiration date on the PlusPoints is not being extended for anyone"

BUT as United is perfectly aware flying out of Australia has not been permitted since March 2020 without a special emergency permit for which I and almost no one was eligible.
Also United cancelled all of its flights from Melbourne, Victoria to the USA.
Travel between states in Australia has not been permitted. Even if I could have obtained an emergency permit to travel, I was not allowed to travel to Sydney NSW, the only place from which United provided limited flights.
The new rules are clearly very unfair to any of Australian customers. The special situation of Australian customers needs to be responded to.

 

[eolesen]

To be fair, United didn't put those restrictions on travel in place, your government did...

 

[mgason]

True. United also stopped flying to and from my location though. I think my point is loyalty should go both ways after all of these years and my literally having sat on a United plane for over a million miles. 40 times around the equator and hundreds of thousands of $.

 

[mgason]

This drama goes on. United did extend plus points for Australian customers. Until the end of June. So I booked tickets and hoped to at least get to use some of my plus points. I booked a full fare business ticket for myself and economy with plus point upgrades (hopefully) for my 2 companions. I have 400 plus points which I legitimately earned prior to United no longer flying to Australia. These tickets use a mere 160 of them, that is if the upgrades come through. Then United started cancelling flights. They dropped all flights from Melbourne Australia to the US in May. They did after several calls to the 1K line, totaling 4.5hours get alternative routes sorted involving flying from Sydney to the US with a Qantas flight Melbourne Sydney at no cost to me.
But this added an over night stay as no flights were able to connect in the morning. So although they fixed the ticket for free I am out 2 hotel rooms at a total of $360 and a day of vacation lost. Again still ok really. Hopefully they will not cancel the return direct US > Melbourne flights. I am hopeful as they have started advertising them.

BUT it seems very unfair that they announce they will take away all of my plus points only 30 days after they actually start flying to my location. How could I possibly use them all. These are points I earned by spending lots of money on flying. I earned them. They gave me no opportunity to use them. Yet now they take them away just as they start flying. Loyalty should be a 2 way street.
In effect it costs them nothing to let me keep them. If Covid had not happened and they had flown to Melbourne I would have used them. Let me use them now. I am well on my way to earning them for next year. I am being loyal.

Side note. The business flight I took from Sydney to LAX was pretty disappointing. Food service was much poorer than pre covid. One tray dumped with a complete meal, no dessert. Drinks did flow freely. The aircraft was changed, not new Polaris seating as originally shown, and my carefully selected mid cabin away from the bathroom and galley seat was changed. My companion was moved from beside me to a separate seat. This was rectified by placing us in 2 seats in the center with a bathroom either side and galley directly behind. Noisy, smelly.
None of this would really bother me if I did not feel United is just not showing concern for loyal Australian customers.

 

[eolesen]

Looks like Plus Points got extended again for US customers. Not sure if it will apply to Australia as well, but I'd hope it might.

PlusPoints expiring July 31, 2022 will be extended to January 31, 2023.

PlusPoints expiring January 31, 2023 will be extended to July 31, 2023.