<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Thanks for the spanking, Jana. I promise to be a better customer in the future. Please let me continue to spend money on your airline.
Give it another year, and they will let us feed our own tickets into the machine at the gate (or God forbid, just swipe a card). At that stage, between Web booking, Easy Check-In, and trusting me to use the gate boarding machine, I'll be on my way without danger of being treated like an imposition. Maybe the machines can say nice things, like "thanks for your business" </font>
I assume this is your way of saying that the job I perform for UA is better off as automated and without personality or human interaction. My job may well go that route. My bank went that route and actually charges me money if I ever interact with a human, by choice, over a machine.
Considering the fact that UA's automated recordings are similar to the "all is well" recording you might receive at a 1960's ashram front office, sticking with the human factor may not be such a bad idea. Certainly until the practice is perfected.
Lastly, I could give a crap which airline you spend your money with. If UA screwed you over and we owe you compensation, so be it. Every US airline is full or close to it. However, something tells me that you're the type of person everybody owes something to.
Somebody pays you for your work. UA promised to pay me, but has a problem for over two yrs. with the "how much". How amenable to discussion would you be if you hadn't been paid appropriately for over two years?
Oops! You don't have that problem and I do. Pardon me if I'm a tad pissed off about it.
If UA wants to fully automate it's airport operations- fine. Just pay the people who handled it for the time it was a manual operation what we were promised.