Hi all. First time caller, long time listener.

I've been having a very odd interaction with United since Saturday morning, when I received an automated phone message that a reservation I have on Sat Jan 7 2012 was affected by a schedule change. I called United and discovered the second leg of my PVD-IAD-GSO flight had been canceled. The agent on the phone told me the reason the flight was canceled was that they were putting in a Continental IAD-GSO flight to replace it, but that that flight was currently registering as sold out.

The agent said she needed to call for some help, and she disappeared for about ten minutes. When she came back, she said the CO flight existed and she could view it, but it was not fully in the system yet, and that it would be in my best interest to call back Monday or Tuesday. She said if all else fails, the latest PVD-GSO trip in the system on United, at 2:12pm (the original itinerary started at 6pm), still had plenty of seats.

Fast forward to today, when I called back. Neither the agent I spoke to, nor the supervisor I requested, had any knowledge of the phantom Continental flight. They both called Continental, who could offer no insight, and neither could explain what the Saturday agent could be referring to. I was rather confused, so I have not yet rescheduled the flight to 2:12, and said I'd call back to resolve it at another time. So two questions:

1) Anyone have any speculation as to what's going on here? The simplest explanation is that the Saturday agent was mistaken, but she was clearly seeing some flight on her screen, and whomever she contacted for backup saw the same thing and told her what to tell me. Yet neither of the people I spoke to today could think of a scenario where someone would give this advice.

2) While I can get away with leaving at 2:12, it means missing the morning session of a conference that I was hoping to attend. If I find a more agreeable flight on, say, US, will I be able to dump my UA flight without a fee? The ticket is nonrefundable, but I also paid for a 6pm departure, and it seems hard to defend keeping my money while telling me to show up four hours earlier. I may stick to UA anyway, but it would be nice to know my options.

Thanks for any help anyone can provide. I doubt it's relevant to this situation, but I'm a lowly 2P, albeit with enough trips booked between now and the end of the year to jump up to 1P, just in time for devalued bonus miles.