I was booking for my Israeli cousin a USA domestic ticket on United.com. I chose The Basic Economy fare and went through the booking process. When I put in his credit card information with his billing address in Israel and tried to process the booking in the final step, the page automatically refreshed and showed a new higher price for the ticket (the standard economy fare) and requested I fill out the payment information once again. There was no notification/explanation given.
I confirmed that this was not simply a case of a fare change that I was unlucky enough to encounter at precisely the moment of my booking, as can be understood from the following:
Entering the Israeli billing address automatically triggered the United site to place me as being in Israel. ( Along with a choice of language, United.com allows you to choose Continent etc). So when I tried to to rebook for a 2nd time, all that was showing was standard economy fare. The basic economy option was non existent. Only after I manually changed my location as being in USA, was I able to go back and rebook for a 3rd time the basic economy fare which magically reappeared (using my own US based credit card).
My question is, are basic economy fares only for USA cardholders. I couldn't fathom a reason for why that would be, but I hope that the policy applies equally to all International card holders, and not specifically for Israeli card holders...
Any feedback would be appreciated. First time poster here.
