For someone with my travel patterns, UA's recent compensation changes are essentially a fare hike and I'll treat them accordingly.
I travel enough to experience maybe one serious "actually United's problem" problem every two months (mechanical or crew-related delay or the very rare onboard service problem). In the past year I ended up with 3 e-certificates. I treat these as coupons which reduce the cost of travel by, on average over the years, about 5-10%.
For someone with my travel patterns, UA's compensation changes amount to a <10% fare hike -- which, to be honest, feels a little stingy and a little mean.
Today I pay a slight premium to fly UA versus AS or VX because (1) UA is great at rebooking during irrops and has a great route network, (2) even if something does go uncontrollably wrong, I'll know that United cares -- pre-merger UA owned up to its mistakes and said "sorry" in a meaningful way, and (3) my up-front price premium may in the long run carry a 5-10% discount.
The merger apparently gets me (1) SHARES, (2) lower standards for accountability in customer service, and (3) higher fares.
Those are all totally reasonable business decisions. Of course I also make a business decision: I pick a carrier every year. For the past several years, UA's awesome customer relations attitude has helped increase their expected value in my mind and made them the obvious best carrier for my travel patterns. These customer-unfriendly tactics will of course change the balance.