You're deliberately distracting from the point which is that CO's lack of visibility into its systems is what's caused this issue, the on-topic issue, to continue to drag on for so long.

UA was only used as an example of an airline with a more transparent system, where the level of effort to isolate this sort of bug would have been substantially less due to the amount of information provided to customers (and a different methodology in processing upgrades). The fact that UA does not have the offering on award tickets does not detract from that point, as the point was this would have been a heck of a lot easier to get to the bottom of on UA due to their systems and procedures.

If you want to use yet another airline example with more transparent systems, which has such a benefit, we can use DL. If on DL, you were booked into some Elite reward class and your upgrade didn't process, and there's upgrade seats available while you're inside your window, you'd be able to resolve it quicker. A ticket purchase on DL allows you to confirm upgrades if V space is available (they'll even show you Upgrade: Available during the search process). So if that weren't processing, you could get them to force you up. There's no mysterious EUA algorithm that has to run when it feels like/if it's working that day that you have to wait for. Or at time of booking, if it didn't say Upgrade: Requested, you'd know there was a problem.

If CO had better systems, tools, and visibility into this, this wouldn't be a big deal. We should all be on the same page in terms of wanting CO to have better systems, tools, and visibility, no?