That's odd

Is your present companion still showing your status?

That has now been past practice, just needed to be done prior 30 Nov

One can only change the nominated companion during a short window at the end :of each calendar year. I suspect that's the issue here. The error message could certainly be more informative.

I don't believe that is true. A new MMer can nominate at any time and a existing nomination just needs to be done prior 30 Nov to take effect the next year. As UA notes on its MMer nomination website site -- quote a couple of posts back.

I'll try again closer to November and report back. :-)

Sure, a new MMer can nominate at any time. But the question was about changing the nominated person. I tried the same "Register companion" link as was described above - and that UA lists as the one to use to change the designated companion. I got the same error message as reported above. I've been a MMer for :over 10 years.

Recently or in the past? The issue is if this has changed recently? (or a temp issue)
Fairly sure others have reported in the past trying to change well before Nov and it was just deferred, not error out.

:idea: I tried that yesterday.

I successfully changed nominees in October of last year for 22 status.

Here's a situation I'm in, and I haven't called United to ask about it, but I'm curious what people think the answer ought to be:

My father-in-law is 3MM GS. When his wife passed a few years back, he called in and nominated me as his designated companion. At the time I was 1K, so since then I've inherited his GS status. Recently I became 1MM myself, hence Lifetime Gold. And, based on my own flying record, I would qualify for 1K if I wasn't already GS via companion status.

My question is: Could I ask United to designate my wife as my companion, even though I'm already designated as somebody else's companion? And if they did allow that, what status should my wife get? I think it would be clearly wrong for her to get GS, but I could see a case for Gold (my lifetime status) or 1K (the status I'd have, absent being my FIL's companion).

Yes
Likely GS -- see discussion earlier in the upthread on chaining

You can always designate her as your MM companion and she will inherit your status as well. Since you inherit GS as a MM companion, she will too through you.

David

I’ve never nominated anyone and I went it to do so and got this.

Sounds to me like a call to the MP service center is in order. If you’ve never nominated anyone, it should’ve applied right away. Good luck and please keep us posted

Do you check all of these boxes (from the UA website)...

Companion eligibility:

1. A companion is defined as a spouse, significant other or individual who resides at same home address, based on MileagePlus profile information.
2. Your companion must be an enrolled member of the MileagePlus program under his or her own name and may not already be the companion of another Million Miler.
3. The companion benefit is awarded on an annual basis and is nontransferable.
4. Your companion will receive his or her own individual Premier credentials and does not need to travel with you to enjoy the benefits of the Premier level awarded.
5. Your designated companion will automatically renew each year unless you let us know otherwise by November 30 of the current year.
6. You may change the companion on your account; however the change will not be in effect until January 1 of the following year. All change requests must be made by November 30 (for changes to existing companion nominations) or December 30 (for first-time nominations) to be effective for the following year. MileagePlus will not be able to accept changes to existing companion nominations during the month of December.

The home address one is easy to trip you up....

As the system errors out of the entry of just the MMers information before entering any companion info,independent of if the MMer has a registered companion or not, this seems clearly a website issue. It's broken for any use.