unagi1:
Re. my call to the media relations guy quoted in the wsj, I pointed out to him the four points I had made earlier on this thread
1- don't charge a credit card unless you have authorization to do so
2- I should have heard from UA almost immediately after the charge.
3- the ATM analogy is inappropriate (the ATM is not selling anything, and a $1000 dollar is a clearly identifiable mistake- whether the $1000 bill is returned is a moral issue not a contractual one)
4- all this could have been avoided is UA had not tried to strong-arm me.

We had a good talk. I just wanted to make sure that he got a different side of story. I have a feeling that someone in his position does not necessarily get the full picture of what happened. For example, I do not think he was aware that people like myself had been charged more than they were quoted. I feel- but that is just a guess- that some people had not necessarily told him everything. Perhaps in an effort to hide responsibility?

The frantic attempts at running 8 authorizations on someone's debit card (see above) ( btw NEVER buy anything on a debit card: you have no recourse is something goes wrong! does indicate to me that efforts were made to hide responsibility in this case.