There was a thread a while ago that mentioned that someone at UA had said that the physical BP requirement was driven by Sarbanes-Oxley. S/OX is apparantly the new version of "due to security requirements...". This was one of my favorite recent lame-o excuses for a decidedly (and bizarrely) unfriendly customer policy by UA. Especially given how bad LH is at posting flight segments and how well known this problem is.
As for wanting to know if this specific thing improves when you become 1K, nope. Even 1Ks have to go through this "mail the original BP" in process. To note however, I've never had a problem eventually getting such segments to post, though it has taken upwards of 3 months. For good or bad, that's the process, and it eventually has worked for me 100% of the time without further issue.
Also note, I've never had a problem calling MP and getting an agent, and I've found the people there to be perfectly competent. They are simply under instruction to tell people to follow this process for credit.
As for the name mis-match, I have to agree that this is a problem of your own making. Especially since Robert>Bob changes the first letters that the computer would scan to grant credit. Something like Donald>Don probably wouldn't be a problem. But either way, you're just asking for trouble with this, and apparently getting it.