For several weeks now, I have been seeing this on the UA website.

I put together a multi-city international itinerary involving UA and a Star Alliance Partner airline (UA doesn't fly to the destination city), selecting the Fully Refundable Economy fare for each leg. When I finally press the "Buy now" button, I get this error message -

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We are unable to process your request.
Please try again later, or contact customer support at 1-800-396-1751.
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Initially, I tried to book it during different times of the day on different days. But got the same error each time. I also tried selecting the "Fully Refundable" option on the first page so the fares that were displayed on subsequent screens were for Fully Refundable Economy, Fully Refundable Premium Economy and Business/First, not non-refundable Regular Economy (or Basic Economy for the domestic leg).

The final fare seen via this route matched the final fare when I did not select Fully Refundable on the first screen but selected the Fully Refundable Economy fare individually for each leg.

After continuing to get this error over several days, I finally called UA on the number provided. The agent tried to make my refundable Econ bookings and the fares she saw were what I was seeing. But when it was time to purchase, she told me that the reason I was getting the error is because that fare is actually not available. So whatever (much higher) fare is available, does not get displayed at all.

She said she was going to report this issue. It has been several weeks now since I spoke to her. I tried booking again today and get the same error.

If I wish to fly UA, what is the solution other than wasting time getting an agent to make the booking where I have to dictate all the specifics of each leg and don't know if the fare at the end is acceptable to me after all that?

I don't wish to purchase a non-refundable fare at this time because it's likely that my dates would have to change. My intended travel is still several weeks away but I am closing the gap slowly.

Since I am not losing any money at the end of the booking attempts, I don't know whether to call this fraud or false advertising in terms of the fares I am shown. Or just plain incompetent website developers that UA uses.