Here's an interesting situation that United screwed the pooch on. I have a +1 itinerary going to LAX-JFK and returning JFK-SFO-LAX. I upgraded the outbound using CR1s. A friend upgraded the return using CR1s. Everything was clear except the SFO-LAX leg.

The SFO-LAX leg cleared today and I received a voicemail from the India call center, saying that they were deducting 15,000 miles (x2) for the upgrade. This annoyed the hell out of me.

The first agent I spoke to was a complete moron and couldn't make sense of the itinerary. He insisted that my friend sponsored the LAX-JFK leg and that I used miles for the return. He claimed he couldn't see what happened to the CR1s I used since that information wasn't available to him. He <deleted by moderator> didn't like my attempts at correcting him. He finally got frustrated and transferred me back to the automated system. Yay for customer service!

The next agent I spoke to saw the same thing, but was able to fix it. He put the miles back into my account and reapplied the upgrades, retaining my seat selections. The only downer is that my friend has to sign off on the upgrades at the airport before the return.

I'm annoyed that miles were deducted for some unknown reason, some <deleted by moderator> agent couldn't fix the situation, and my friend has to manually sign off on these after he already did it digitally.

However, I want to check with you ladies and gentlemen to see if my gripes are legitimate before I complain to United.