Increasingly that's exactly what we've been doing. If we care at all, and we can't be guaranteed J at booking (via open R inventory) we just book J.

However I understand the frustration of being undercut by TODs or HODs. United is luring people to fly United by the promise of upgrades. We applied RPUs to our 26 year old daughter's flight to Costa Rica. She was upgraded to Houston, but waitlisted for Costa Rica. I asked her to check in at T-24 for her flight to Houston. She was #1 on the waitlist to CR, but at T-24 for the Costa Rica flight, the two available J seats were sold. (In retrospect if it was important, I should have told her to take whatever offer they made when she checked in. And I realize that in the future she won't inherit our 1k status on the applied RPU.) As it is I'll tell her to sit with her Mom and I'll sit in the back. Three hour flight, big deal.

Most of us who (like me) have complete control over who, when and where we fly, will have a breaking point … for me the breaking point will be when TPAC/TATL GPUs are too difficult to redeem given our style of travel. We will not sit in Y crossing oceans. Been there, done that (far too many times), but not again. While United is ok with me for TPACs and TATLs in J, it's not my first choice (or second or third …). If I start having to pay full fare for TPAC and TATL Js, I will fly the airline that offers me the best combination of schedule, comfort, and price, and in most cases that will not be United. Of course that's exactly what I'm doing right now, but the value proposition is still tilted towards United because of ease (for us) of GPU redemption.