Cannot add baggage for Flight to US

Estie

Hi. We have just booked a trip to the US through expedia. We booked hotel and flights together as it gave us the best price, but checked baggage is not included. This is fine for me as I travel light and a cabin bag is big enough, but two of our group have decided they want to take a checked bag. On the United Airlines website it tells me that I can add a  checked bag for £55, however, when I tried to add baggage it just said "Your trip doesn’t qualify for prepay bag purchase". I started a chat and they explained that they cannot take payments from billing addresses outside the US so we would have to pay for bags at the airport.
This seems odd to me as I have never not been able to add checked bags before travelling. Is this normal? Does it mean we are going to have to pay more expensive airport rates for the baggage?

MeteredOut

Estie said:

Hi. We have just booked a trip to the US through expedia. We booked hotel and flights together as it gave us the best price, but checked baggage is not included. This is fine for me as I travel light and a cabin bag is big enough, but two of our group have decided they want to take a checked bag. On the United Airlines website it tells me that I can add a  checked bag for £55, however, when I tried to add baggage it just said "Your trip doesn’t qualify for prepay bag purchase". I started a chat and they explained that they cannot take payments from billing addresses outside the US so we would have to pay for bags at the airport.
This seems odd to me as I have never not been able to add checked bags before travelling. Is this normal? Does it mean we are going to have to pay more expensive airport rates for the baggage?

What did the chat agent say about this? 

Did you check https://www.united.com/en/us/fly/baggage/checked-bags.html ?

Prices will depend on ticket class and potentially route.

eskbanker

It does seem consistent with their published policy:

Terms and Conditions

All checked bags are subject to our bag rules. This product only applies to flights operated by United or United Express and marketed by United. The billing address for your trip must be in the U.S. to qualify. You must prepay for your checked bags at least 24 hours before your flight to receive any discount. Prices are based on standard sized bags for one-way flights. Oversized and overweight bags, as well as special items, must be paid for at the airport.

https://www.united.com/en/gb/fly/baggage/prepay-for-your-checked-bags.html

Voyager2002

Estie said:

 I started a chat and they explained that they cannot take payments from billing addresses outside the US so we would have to pay for bags at the airport.
This seems odd to me as I have never not been able to add checked bags before travelling. Is this normal? Does it mean we are going to have to pay more expensive airport rates for the baggage?

See if you can change the billing address on one of your cards to your hotel, or a random address in the USA. I did this once, but many years ago: at that time it was simple and solved problems like this.

MyRealNameToo

Voyager2002 said:

Estie said:

 I started a chat and they explained that they cannot take payments from billing addresses outside the US so we would have to pay for bags at the airport.
This seems odd to me as I have never not been able to add checked bags before travelling. Is this normal? Does it mean we are going to have to pay more expensive airport rates for the baggage?

See if you can change the billing address on one of your cards to your hotel, or a random address in the USA. I did this once, but many years ago: at that time it was simple and solved problems like this.

A friend did this on the advice of how to get a replacement debit card sent when they lost theirs whilst on holiday. The two problems they had were 

1) A credit card statement was posted to the hotel so in principle some unknown party had their full card number as they were printed on the statements at those time

2) The bank reported the change of address to the CRAs  which resulted in some questions being asked when applying for credit again in the future saying they'd lived in the same address for 10 years