I had a rather interesting conversation with a UA Reservations agent over a overbooked flight. First, let me explain my situation...

I am booked to fly CLE-ORD-CLE, possibly the simplest itinerary. What could go wrong? A schedule change, of course. They changed my flight coming home by 2 hours, so I tried to switch to the later flight - the last one of the day. I called up and asked if taking a later flight was possible, with a party of 4, the agent told me only 3 tickets in "W" class were available. I asked if I could pay the marginal amount of money to upgrade to the higher fare class, $20, for 1 of the tickets. She complied!

She went ahead and switched all the tickets to the CRJ flight, and then tried to bait me back to the original flight! She kept stressing that adding the 4 of us to that flight made it "heavily overbooked". I then proceeded to ask by how many, she said 8. Then she warned me about it being the last flight of the day, and being overbooked. I then asked "our reservations are confirmed, so if the flight is indeed overbooked, volunteers will be used". Her responce: "This flight is operated by United Express and their procedures are different from ours".

I did not want to argue with her, and afterall, I probably will be the first passenger to volunteer if indeed it stays overbooked. I thanked her for her time and hungup - I am watching my reservations VERY closely!