I had an interesting experience with this recently. My wife and I are going to Bermuda to celebrate our 1-year anniversary later this year, so I ended up booking the ticket via UR instead of on United's website, purely because I figured I would get PQM/PQD at a similar rate instead of booking via United's website and getting neither (and the rate was pretty much equivalent to the Saver ticket). So I ended up with W-class tickets from EWR-BDA, and I thought it was pretty solid - not a long flight, but the PQD would definitely help my wife out (I have Presidential Plus and am thankfully spared from those contemplations...for now).
UA's website now allows you to see the expected PQM and (more importantly, given I'm a bit lazy in determining how this is figured out) PQD - and we have 0 PQD. I confirmed that PQD on what are deemed bulk tickets will always be zero. However, I fought with them over the PQM, as they were showing ~2k PQM for a round-trip that is around 1600 miles. I am Premier Platinum, so I found the fare breakdown and argued that even with bulk fare, I should be earning 9x multiplied by the fare (less international taxes, etc.). In the end, they agreed and said I should earn closer to 4k miles for the trip, but that the updated estimate would NOT show up on UA's website. I'm skeptical of the whole thing, mainly because I've been calling them a lot recently about MPS.com activity not posting, and general mileage account posting being relatively late, but it seems like at least the PQD should post based on the airfare.
Maybe I got lucky, or maybe I'll end up getting screwed anyways...but that's my recent experience.