Moral of the story: If you are told to call UA for an AE booking, PROCEED WITH CAUTION!

This morning I changed an Aeroplan reward the UA website to change a reward itinerary so I Could avoid CA and avoid a stop in PEK. I chose instead a SFO-ICN flight. After this was confirmed I logged in to the UA website to select my seats on the new flight.

After entering my name and PNR the following message was displayed in bold red text at the top of each page:

! A modification has been made to your itinerary. Please contact United Reservations to have your ticket reissued.

I immediately called the phone number and the friendly agent told me he would take care of it. He put me on hold, came on to say he was calling the airlines, put me on hold again, then told me everything was taken care of.

I thanked him very much, and hung up.

Immediately I received 5 e-mailed itineraries from UA showing a much older version of the reward itinerary... so I logged in to their website again to see what it showed.

On the online itinerary, and on the AC website online itinerary, the flight I had just changed to no longer existed. I called UA again and was told that SFO-ICN was no longer on my itinerary. She did some digging and told me, "Oh you just called and cancelled it a few minutes ago." Never during that conversation did I (or the agent) use the word "Cancel!!!"

It took about another hour of me trying to convince the UA agent, then her manager, that because UA cancelled this flight, they should reinstate it. After over 90 minutes had passed they apologized and said I had to call AE instead, and there was nothing they could do, and they refused to provide compensation of any kind.

I called AE and had to go through the same thing all over again. Finally (a few hours later) I got back on the flight I wanted. I logged in to the UA website to select my seats again, and guess what I saw STILL appearing at the top of the page....

I think I'll wait until tomorrow to try to sort this one out.