I've had mixed results also, but it certainly seems better lately. I mostly do a regular IAD-SFO, and it seems that at both ends, the first group of bags coming out is all orange tagged. The last dozen times, probably, I don't think I've seen a single non-tagged bag before mine comes out. After that, of course, I'm gone.

LHR this spring, I had the same experience about pulling the bags off, but the bag was there pretty quickly. DEL was similar setup, and the bag was off by the time I got there, but we were met by some people and that slowed us down. I'd say that my experience has been that international was better than domestic, but I'm not seeing that any more. Caveat being, as I say, 90% of my domestic is between 2 UA hubs.