Now, granted I've never been treated super-badly by UA, but everytime I've had an issue, a quick letter sent though united.com/feedback seems to do the trick. I often get an appropriate response within a day or two, and I'm just a lowly gold. As I mentioned, I've done DMs on twitter as well.

I can see the need to go public if you've attempted to go through the channels and don't get anything back. Given the incident happened on Wednesday, according to the post, highly doubt that happened here. So seems like an opportunist looking for way publicity/$.