Do you often check your existing airline reservations for changes? If not you should because they all have schedule changes, aircraft type changes, even some flights cancel and you're moved to another flight that may not fit your plans.
As I do about once a week I was checking our United flights we have booked for quite a few upcoming trips and stumbled upon a schedule change that was just not going to work. We were to leave Portland, Oregon (PDX) at 5:45 AM for the flight home to Houston (IAH). Yes that would be considered "OH DARK THIRTY" in most circles, but the fare was much cheaper when I booked them months ago for the return flight so I got approval from the "BOSS" (Mrs. IAHFLYR) for that early of a morning flight that actually would get us home before noon. Well this morning I found they have moved the departure time from PDX up to 5:20 AM.........nope, gotta draw the line somewhere and that extra 25 minutes sleep was where I put the line in the sand.
Rather than accept the schedule change in our accounts I decided to call United and got a very nice Premier line representative named Carmen. I told her of the situation and asked if we could PLEASE take the noonish flight since that change just did not fit into my lifestyle. She put me on hold and in about five minutes came back and asked what seats we wanted!!!! Awesome, no penalty to make the change nor increase in the fare.
It does pay to check all your travel reservations often and this goes to prove what my Mother always told me, "Son you will always get better results with honey rather than vinegar"!!!
Thank you United and Mom.
When AA or DL changes my schedule, I get an email from them. In fact, I just got one yesterday for a flight in October (my departure time moved an hour later and my connecting flight number changed, though the times on that one are the same). Does UA not do that?
While I don't mind checking my hotel reservations to see if the price has gone down, the idea that I might not be informed of a schedule change by an airline doesn't sit well with me. At any given time I might have half a dozen future reservations. I'd hate to have to continually check that my times and flight numbers are still the same as when I booked.
It's nice that UA was able to adjust your flights without their $200 change fee. Where I see a problem is that you had to discover the change in your original reservation rather than being notified as soon as it happened. That should be automatic.