I've found it extremely painful booking UA Round the world tickets. As a 1K million miler who has flown about 15 of these, I find the new UA process absurd..

1) They force you to go through the *new* round the world ticketing desk. I've now had to wait on hold of hours to make minor changes
2) I've found that the agents at the desk actually have NO CLUE about the ticketing rules. I've gotten into a number of battles with them, where I've been reading them their own fare rules and they've had to relent. They've gotten base fares wrong, they've built itineraries that go backwards with clearly the wrong dates, they can't even answer simple questions like what is the base for for a 34,000 mile ticket originating in NRT! Basically much less useful than United's standard agents!
3) Most infuriating, on my most recent attempt to book a ticket, I was informed that United is now going to start faring the RTW tickets based on billing address country, versus country of origin. THIS IS CLEARLY AGAINST THE POSTED STAR ALLIANCE RULES which are on the Star website! How is United allowed to do this? I sat on hold with United for over an our with a customer service supervisor trying to refute the rule and in the end, just ended up giving up!

I've basically had it with the New United. Has anyone had similar experiences?