Originally Posted by archcreate

Sure does seem to vary greatly how folks view these things. I have found virtually all the staff on the ground at SFO to be very helpful over 6 trips so far this year. I do understand the initial poster's extreme frustration. Their experience was beyond the pale.
United does suck at communicating effectively, but it is a big complex beast running an airline of this size.
My grief came while in Bahrain last week I received an email that there was a 14 hour delay for my flight scheduled 15 hrs later in Dubai and I couldn't get a hold of anyone about the extra hotel stay in both Dubai and DC that would result. Very frustrating for sure. I was at the Dubai airport five hours before (Coming off my inbound) and no United rep was there at all. Didn't come back for the scheduled departure because I figured that unlike the Hub at SFO they aren't going to keep extra 777s parked in the Middle East waiting for problems to solve. Took a chance and it was fine.
I wrote a long, detailed, but professional email complaining and just quickly heard back from United with what I considered generous compensation. I'm a Silver for another two weeks before moving up to Gold, so I don't have much status, but United still took care of me after some initial bumps.