Using a voluntary denied boarding ticket.

[urpius pilot]

My neighbor has a denied boarding ticket for volunteering to be bumped from an overbooked flight. Pardon the incorrect terminology. She has been trying to use the ticket and has found it impossible to book any flight using the credit. Can anyone from res give me some ideas as to how my neighbor can redeem her denied boarding credit? Thanks.

 

[tadjr]

If she is unable to find an "X" seat to book the free ticket, she can still use it to book the cheapest flight available and take $200 off the price (if she was a domestic volunteer). In many markets this is almost equivalent to a free ticket anyway. If she wants to search for a flight that she can use the free ticket on, she can go to the website and do a Dividend Miles search for the discount points option (12500 miles per each direction for coach) and this will equal an "X" seat for the voucher. She can then call rez to book the voucher using the flights she found with the DM search option.

 

[Hey.. Chill Out]

What a sucker. Those vouchers are a complete ripoff. You can't fly to certain cities, and there are a ton of blackout dates. My friend in POC tells me there's only a 30% remittance on those things. So, at the risk of our image being tarnished with poor customer service we are giving people 200 dollars to fly locally, and we ruin their plans in the process.

 

[tadjr]

What a sucker. Those vouchers are a complete ripoff. You can't fly to certain cities, and there are a ton of blackout dates.

The vouchers are worth it to those that have the time to be rerouted (depending on how long the reroute is and what else is being offered) and know how to use them. You are not going to get Florida during Spring Break or to most places during the peak holiday travel times. If you are flexible in your plans and destination, you can find seats, but you have to be flexible. There are no blackout dates, although the free seats are limited, but the $200 off can be used on any flight (even if it isnt in the zone you originally were ticketed in ie domestic US now traveling to Europe.)
If you cant be flexible or want to travel at peak time, they now offer the $200 off option (which wasnt offered before) and in many markets you can get a decent fare that means very often it ends up being free or very cheap. Either way, the worse case scenario is $200 off your next ticket for taking the bump. Not great, but not too bad for a couple of hours if you have the time to spare.

 

[Hey.. Chill Out]

Yeah, that's BEST case scenario!

But that's not always the case when you are trying to get to MKE from PHX. We have 3 flights a day. So you are sitting in the airport ALL DAY and there's a good chance the others are full already, so now you're getting thrown on another airline and you have no clue if your bags are going to make it.

People that are bumped do NOT share your vision, and the fact that we only see 30% of those being used shows what a scam they are.