MP Goddess, welcome to FT!
And thanks for your interesting post.
The UA website leaves much to be desired. Much of the time, it or parts of it are down. As others have commented, "My Itineraries" is down so often that it gets very frustrating. And after I log into the 1K website (which somehow does not allow my password manager to fill automatically), I need to log in again to go to My Itineraries. Also, I fly a lot internationally and often I find it useful to fly IAD to FRA but back from MUC (times, prices, upggradeability, bonus mileage credit). But to get this sort of routing and information, I almost always need to talk to someone at UA. The web site just doesn't do it. So now I'll have to pay extra for this information.
Most of the time I have received excellent treatment by calling the reservations line or the MP line. But often I get either misleading information and I have had instances in which one agent was particularly helpful, even bending the rules a bit (not a lot). And then I have had to call back and other agents undo this "favor" and threaten me with retaliation. Yes, I did escalate and got better treatment up above. Sometimes the 1K email line gives me grief--I had to go pretty high up in management to get my 500 mile bonus for joining the Ted Club as the 1K line agent denied that Ted was part of United. And getting credit for other promotions is often a real horror story.
When I do get excellent service either on the phone or in the air, I do send an e-mail to UA complimenting the agent and I know that these compliments are posted to the employees' record. Overall, I get much more excellent than bad service from UA--but when service is bad, it is sometimes horrid. And for any business, that is not good news. The good news is how much better service has gotten.