Originally Posted by narvik

We've heard of these 'conspiracy theories' before, and I too have thought a few times that there MUST be some funny-business going on with United's pricing.

Trying to find logical explanations, could it be possible that in OPs case, a TA (or suchlike) was somehow reserving multiple seats on OP's flights for a prospective group of travelers, thus reducing inventory. But then never completing the purchase, and thus releasing that inventory again a few hours later, once they couldn't secure a confirmation by the travel group. Maybe repeating the process the next day at the exact same time in exactly the same fashion?

Trying to work out plausible scenarios that would appear in a way that the OP seems to have witnessed....