Originally Posted by
jsloan
The reason that it's a lot of manual work is that you're asking an agent to break the pricing rules. At this point, this isn't really any different than seeing a pizza advertised at $15 and calling and trying to get it for $10 because that's what you paid five years ago.
I disagree with you on this point, the ticket purchased is an HOU-SYD ticket that is not creating any stopovers. UA fare routing and pricing permits connections in Asia on US48 to Australia tickets (even on award tickets), it is just the limitation on number of search results that UA.com provides, if UA increased the search results limitation from 200 to 1,000 results I am sure the OPs requested routing would be shown. For instance I was able to find a 3 segment saver fare from SAT-SYD with connections in LAX and ICN on April 5. The routing on US48 to SYD with a connection in the US and Asia is available it is just not shown on the menu, if you want an analogy I think it is more similar to going to In-N-Out and ordering a Cheeseburger Animal Style off the "Secret Menu" vs asking for a discount of the price of the burger.
I still think OP should try to call in again and see if he can find an agent willing to use the back end system which they can still use if they know what they are doing. It doesn't break any pricing rules because the fare still has to auto-validate when the agent issues the ticket.