Here's one I haven't run into before. A colleague was booked on UA from ABQ to SJC via DEN. She was supposed to depart ABQ at 2 pm. Her travel agent called and advised that UA had rebooked her on a 5:45 pm departure. What was strange was that the 2 pm departure out of ABQ and the connecting flight to SJC had not been cancelled. When she called UA, she was told that her 2 pm flight was so overbooked that they just "moved" people to the later flight. The UA agent also told her that they used fare levels paid as the criteria for who to move and who not to move.

She asked if there would be denied boarding compensation and was told no. UA was treating this like a schedule change, even though there was no schedule change, just a miscalculation by the computers on how much to overbook the flights.

It just gets better and better.