"Previous Ticket Balance" as form of payment, useless for business reimbursement
Almost half a million lifetime flight miles on United. I have no idea if that is impressive around here (I expect not) but I am not a first-time air traveler.
You purchase a ticket on United, then you have to cancel the flight, and are given a "travel credit". (or maybe it's a "future flight credit", a mysterious distinction that has always puzzled me)
Then you purchase a future ticket, using that credit. The receipt on your new ticket shows the method of payment as "Previous Ticket Balance", with literally no other information.
This is extremely unhelpful in business travel, where in order to be reimbursed, any accounting department is going to want to see the actual form of payment to make sure you haven't bought a ticket, had it reimbursed, canceled the ticket, bought a new ticket with the credit, and then had it reimbursed a second time.
I've been through this twice, and each time it has required a lengthy human dialog with United in order to get the information needed. The nice human one eventually gets on the phone seems mystified by the situation and needs to invent the solution. United must hate these long and expensive phone calls. And with United doing so much business travel, I would think this is a common problem.
So two questions:
Am I doing something wrong in this situation? Is there some other approach to this problem I am not seeing? Is there some other way I can self-serve access to the actual payment history for this ticket? (I have tried, I have tried)
Given how much of United's customer base is business travel, why hasn't United figured out how to provide a usefully informative receipt?