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#961767 by Hev60
14 Jun 2023, 18:04
Hello just looking for some help/opinion please.

We are looking at travelling LHR - SFO in March 2024. I have two credit card upgrade vouchers on my flying club account.

I wanted to book 2 PE cash fares and use vouchers to upgrade ( there is availability both ways.

Initially after checking availability, the agent said the total fares for 2 UC fares would be around £998 each.

I then I may have confused the issue by asking if my travel partner could use her 60k points to reduce her PE fare. I think I remember Mitcha saying he did that a while back.
I know it’s not a good use of her miles/points but this maybe our last long haul flight so really no point in keeping them. I thought 60k would reduce her PE fare by £330. Umm seems not.

The agent came back saying the total UC fares would be £2880.
She had put one fare as a PE cash + 65k points (using 6k of my points) and the other fare (mine) as a cash PE. Then using the vouchers to upgrade.
Fares are on hold with two PNR’s

I think I’ve covered my query but as I was expecting to pay around £2k or even less if I could use my partners points for the fares, I was a bit shocked!
I would really appreciate any thoughts or even other ways of effectively using the vouchers.

Many thanks
#961768 by CommanderB
14 Jun 2023, 18:13
Somethings wrong there… they should be charging the difference in YQ between the PE cash fare and the Upper Class redemption YQ amount. Last time I did this exact thing (about 3 weeks ago) the difference was about $330. There’s no taxes to pay as PE already has the right amount of APD included etc.

You’re going to have to look at the exact PE fare cost. How much YQ is included. Then look at the full reward fare and see how much YQ is included there and work out a rough difference and then question the ticketing agent as to why there’s a big gap.

It’s hard to know without being on the phone listening to what they say.

I don’t have experience of using points to make the underlying fare cheaper so can’t comment on that.
#961769 by Hev60
14 Jun 2023, 23:47
Hi thank you for your reply.

I finally managed to find that screen on the website which breaks down the total fare costs.

For the PE cash fare, YQ is £240
The UC redemption fare YQ is £700
An UC cash fare YQ is listed at £900.

There is quite a significant difference between the Premium & Upper Class YQ amount.
Not sure if she was calculating my fares using £700 or £900 per person

Like you said there’s not a lot of difference with the taxes maybe £2 between PE and UC.

I have read several times in the past on the forum that the agents do make mistakes with their calculations but it’s so difficult to know when this is the case.

I have looked everywhere to see a simple graph of how a credit card voucher can be used to upgrade from fare classes but there’s nothing written anywhere.
They state “Upgrade any booking by one cabin into a reward seat”but don’t explain how the final fare costs is reached when calculating the difference relating to the taxes, surcharges etc

Thanks again
#961770 by CommanderB
15 Jun 2023, 13:17
There’s no harm in trying a second agent.

How much is the underlying PE fare?

Your total should be roughly PE fare + difference in YQ = price per person.

If I was doing this, I’d avoid the MpM fares (using points to reduce the underlying cash fare). I’m sure it works, and it shouldn’t affect the final outcome because it doesn’t change the fare buckets or anything, but I think this is one variable that should be avoided where possible.

The CC vouchers can be used as companion vouchers too. So you may want to compare the cost of Cash Upper + companion. Which should be 1x Upper cash fare + 1x Upper reward taxes & YQ = total price for both passengers.
#961772 by Hev60
15 Jun 2023, 15:39
Thanks again for replying, much appreciated.

How much is the underlying PE fare” ?

We are travelling on March 21st LHR to SFO. Returning from SFO on April 1st.

PE fare is £969.41. Base fare 427.
QY 240.
Taxes etc 302.41
———-
£969.41


UC cash fare £3212.41 Base £2010
QY 900.
taxes etc. 392. 41
————
£3212.41

An upper class redemption QY is £700.

So I assume the agent was working on either a £460 or £660 QY difference to be added onto a PE fare.

I am going to try another agent but looking at these calculations it’s made me realise not to get excited about the reward vouchers in future. Actual points + cash for Upper Class fares is certainly better than trying to use these credit card vouchers to upgrade from PE TO UC because of the higher fees. A reward fare to SFO return is 145k points and just £998.71 total for the fare.
Trouble is we both used a shed load of points travelling to NYC in Dec ‘22 and Tampa in April ‘23 ;-)
#962001 by CommanderB
19 Jul 2023, 11:21
This was bugging me so I looked into it in more detail...

Turns out what I said above WAS right but it changed (possibly during COVID, nobody knows when exactly). It's probably been masked for some time due to the high levels of YQ we've seen.

VS no longer charge the difference in YQ between a cash ticket and a reward ticket. They used a FIXED amount. Let's call this fixed amount "upgrade fee" to avoid calling it YQ.

I did an upgrade yesterday for LAX and that upgrade fee was £330 for one leg. So £660 if I upgrade both outbound and inbound. This was the same since the start of this year as I've been doing it fairly regularly.

Reward YQ for LAX is currently £700.

My flexible Premium ticket already had £400 of YQ on it.

So by doing this cabin upgrade, we're effectively paying over the odds because of this change in calculation method. I've complained to VS because it's really unfair to be paying some fixed fee that a revenue bod has just made up, when it would be a lot fairer to pay the difference as it used to be. This method does not take into account any YQ that's been pre-paid or the fact you may be on a very expensive flexible ticket.
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