You want to book trips for TEO in one swoop, so not having the miles in the bank for a mixed carrier award package was the learning point here.

The CEO of a X0B company is not going to take a customer complaint call. It's going to stop many levels below him/her.

A 315k award torip is worth about 3000 usd to you, and about 200 bucks to united, to put into perspective. That's a good thing to remember when one exchanges time in life for any FF rewards program....you bet against the house x10