Posted to facebook and twitter, and cc:ed thepointsguy. :P. Sorry United, I'm sure this was meant as a nice gesture but the absolute hilarity of how poorly executed it was makes it worth sharing.
(FWIW my original complaint was that I had set up a fairly complicated award itinerary and the agent said we'll hold it for 3 days at 5 pm. Made another change with another agent, and they didn't say anything about when it would be held until. Looked it up online and it said "held until midnight on day X". 5 pm comes, reservation is still there but all segments are deleted." Panicky, I asked the agent what I should do - their answer was "I'm not sure - start over, I suppose" - when I asked if they could help, they told me that I'd be charged a phone booking fee. Went back online, re-booked, and spent over an hour with a representative with a very poor grasp of their routing rules telling me stuff wasn't available when it was, etc. Did finally get it resolved, but was frustrated that it happened in the first place and how long it took to fix)
Anyways, I hope they try again (I did also email them back). The anticipation of what SPECIFIC ITEM is has been killing me!