chokeman, I am afraid that so far most likely you can just be mad with UA. They cancelled the subcontrecting with Silver Airways and most likely add exorbitant YQ fees (it is my understanding that EB sees none of that).

Regarding the Swiss ticket that SK offerred you, this is very normal in my experience. SK has very little interest in maintaining good Swiss prices on tickets sold from their travel agency. Booking Swiss on SK will rarely be a good deal (for cash), modulo some anomalies, which pop up once in a while. For that see Swiss or approach discount online agencies.