Related post: Should You Take A Future Flight Credit Or Electronic Travel Certificate For Cancelling A United Flight?
In an era when other airlines gave out compensation vouchers (for getting bumped or other issues) that had to be mailed in or redeemed at an airport counter, Continental launched electronic travel certificates (ETCs).
You could also get an ETC if you changed a non-refundable ticket to a less expensive ticket. In other words if you had a $1,500 ticket that you didn’t need you could change it to any cheap $29, pay the change fee, and get an ETC for the difference in fare that could be used by anyone.
Continental’s ETCs could be used online, could be used for travel after they expired, and you could book them for anyone to travel. They remained valid until you finished using the entire balance. And there were creative ways to extend their expiration. Continental’s ETCs led the industry for years.
One annoyance was that you had to keep track of the ETCs yourself, there was no place to save them online.
United kept Continental’s superior website and IT system, and along with it their ETCs.
In recent years they actually added value to them by allowing ETCs to be combined, though you won’t always want to do that in advance.
And now in a surprisingly customer friendly enhancement, United has added the ability to view them from your account page and book a flight with them.
This certificate popped up in my account today. It’s all that remains from the tens of thousands of dollars in Continental ETCs that I got from Airtran’s insane Wendy’s cup promotion:
It even reflects the newly extended 24 month ETC expiration date.
Kudos to United for making it easy to keep track of ETCs!
HT: nafnaf12, via DDF and FT
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12 Comments On "United Adds The Ability To View Electronic Travel Certificates In Your Account!"
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How did you get tens of thousands of dollars in Continental credits if the Airtran promo was limited to 32 Credits per person?:)
Good times 🙂
Can I insist on full refund if they cancelled only my outbound flight UA 84 EWR /TLV even if return flight is still on? I think Israel doesn’t even allow foreigners to enter country now
Yes.
If only they would show all of my travel vouchers/credits I’ve gotten due to canceled flights
Don’t want to get ETCs for those?
I do not see the ETC credit – and I know have some – where exactly is it?
Dan, were you ligit in those days?!!
Thanx Dan. I signed on and saw a bunch of vouchers i didn’t know i had.
I don’t want to book another flight just to get it
Remember those days? They forget your kosher meal on a 4 hour flight .
Hi sir , would you like the salmon or the egg today?
Do you have the kosher meal on my profile?
Let me check on that for you.
Sorry sir it did not board (hmm weird) Heres a voucher for $400. instead
Your earphone jack doesn’t work- another $400. (for 1 ks) .
Price of flight round trip $284. first class upgrades all the ways.
earned 9-12,000. miles for the
$800 in vouchers
Dan can you please explain to the airline how it would be in their benefit to reinstate this practice ?
I just checked to see if my travel bank $ was in the account but not there. They gave me a goodwill travel credit after a bad flight.