UA has been providing accommodation for statused passengers for what, a decade or more, at least for 1K, which the OP was.

CO more recently started doing this (just before joining *A to get into compliance). And frankly, CO seems to have a worse reputation for IRROPS, so it was not surprising a CO agent did that.

Plus, IAD just became an int'l station for CO, so it would not be surprising to see a CO agent not be familiar with int'l handling procedures. UA has had int'l arrivals into IAD for who knows how long.

I'm sure everything will be standardized at some point, as people learn and become familiar with new processes. But it's disingenuous to fail to recognize the two organizational histories, and their potential impact to the customer.

Now if the handful of UA agents at CLE screwed up some int'l arrival handling issue, I wouldn't be surprised. But I'd be very surprised if a UA IAD agent denied a hotel room or OAL rebook to a 1K passenger on a misconnect.

The IRROPS handling issues are partly attributable to cross-fleeting, as the CO rep was meeting the flight at the UA hub.