You might remember back in March, when Twitter user @allisonmpreiss tweeted out that she had gotten $10,000 as a voucher from United from being involuntarily denied boarding.
(SEE ALSO:Â Bumped passenger gets TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR voucher)
On a United flight from Washington Dulles to Austin, United needed to bump one passenger, and nobody volunteered. She was the lowest fare passenger and was denied boarding.
.@united offering $1K in travel credit for an oversold flight. If nobody bites, they will kick off the lowest fare passenger by pulling them out of the boarding line. For a flight that THEY oversold. Unreal.
— Allison M. Preiss (@allisonmpreiss) March 22, 2018
Originally she was offered a $1000 voucher and pressed to sign a document saying she voluntarily gave up her seat. When she declined and pressed for the $650 cash that she was entitled to under federal regulations, the United employee eventually gave her a $10,000 voucher. TEN. THOUSAND. DOLLARS!
In an op-ed for NBC, she lamented the relatively lax airline delay / cancellation regulations in the US. And it’s true that this is an area of consumer protection where the US lags well behind the EU. The EU261 law allows compensation of up to 600 Euros in many cases if your flight doesn’t get you to your destination on time.
(SEE ALSO: My EU261 claim is approved! But for how much?)
(SEE ALSO: Why Aer Lingus is paying me $1306)
How she spent the $10,000 voucher
Since it’s been a few months, I reached out to Ms. Preiss to see if she had spent the voucher. She responded that she used about half of it to fly her and her mom first class to Hawaii
Image courtesy of Jason Francisco
By my count she’d have earned about 10,000 redeemable miles with that ticket as well.
Where to next?
She has until one year from the issuing of the voucher to spend the rest of it. So between now and next March, she needs to spend another $5500. While we’ve written before about the best way to use 1,000,000 United miles and the 4 WORST ways to use United miles, I’m not sure how I’d use $5500 burning a hole in my pocket
Readers now it’s your turn. If you had $5500 to spend on United (ex-Washington) before March, where would you go?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
I would fly real Polaris seats out of D.C. to Tel Aviv….assuming $5,500 would cover the flight costs.
Seems like a very generous employee. United seems to be very tight fisted with their vouchers. I was on a transpolar flight (essentially nowhere to divert to) from ORD-PVG and was a medical volunteer to care for a sick woman. I spent 10 hours at her side caring for her (by choice, mind you, as a volunteer) and was offered 150 dollars of vouchers or 7500 points due to “policy”.
One has nothing to do with the other, but you **volunteer** to take care of a sick woman, then gripe about how you weren’t compensated enough for volunteering? Classy.
What a stupid way to use $10,000. So, in the end the real cost to United was about $2,000.
I don’t understand why compensation vouchers expire. The fact I may not have travel plans for a year shouldn’t mean I should lose my compensation, or rush to use it foolishly.
Come on…I opened this to read how she spent $10,000 as the title indicated. Turns out you are not going to tell us. Q@$%#$^@#$^
Agreed! Dumb.
What do you mean? She spent $4500 on 2 first class tickets to Hawaii and she hasn’t spent the rest yet.
The title talked about how she spent $10,000. Turns out she has spent $4,500 – not $10,000.
Hmmm, DC, Jan-Feb, cold, snow, ice, etc —- I’d snag 1st class seats to anywhere in the Caribbean. First choice would be Grand Cayman and a week on Seven Mile Beach. UA does fly there. Brazil, Argentina or Chile would be in summer season as well.