Originally Posted by
infinitium
However, as I've outlined in another reply, my company travel firm has a very -ve rep for being helpful, much less trying to pursue a case where they've already pocketed their travel fees (by making the booking).
After all, they stand to gain exactly 0 benefit from a presumably long-drawn, back-and-forth case with UA, which adds to my pessimism that they'll be helpful.
That would be very short-sighted of them because I would be pressing for the corporation to be changing travel agencies if they were unhelpful. I do it first because
their policy of booking legs on a trip via separate tickets shouldn't put the company's travelers at risk of what happened to you and even more so because of their intransigence in dealing with the issues.
Now, it's a whole other thing if your company is gambling by booking separate tickets for different legs in order to reduce overall travel costs. I can see this as a legitimate cost-saving tactic but it
will come afoul in a situation like yours. In that case, the travel agency isn't at fault but your company should have established policies for your kind of edge case so travelers know what their options are in advance.