United's Website Unable to Accept Austrian Address When Purchasing Tickets
 

For some reason Austria doesn't appear on the list of billing addresses on united.com, so it isn't possible to pay for a ticket on that website with my credit card. Further, even trying to pay via paypal wont work. And further, calling in after long delays I was told they cannot process my Austrian credit card payment - leaving me in limbo. Why is this? Every other EU country is represented. How can one buy a ticket on United airlines?

Presumably because UA employs people who don't know basic geography. After all, now that it's an airline with an entirely domestic US mentality, what need is there for employees who know about foreign things? Unfair, perhaps, but the tendencies are there.

Does it work if you specify your country as "Germany" but give an Austrian address, postal code, etc.?

I realize that they are not the same country and that this has historically been something a point of contention, but I often see automated systems that can manage to process a Canadian address with country "U.S." or an American address with country "Canada" (usually Canadian people working around brain-dead online order systems) and I wonder whether that might not work here.

That is a good suggestion. And one I had thought of. I tried it, but I think the problem is that the postal codes in Austria are only 4 digits while those in Germany are 5. At any rate, it wouldn't work. And the honchos in United in Houston tried for half an hour and they couldn't make it work either.

Hmm, interesting. Did you try Denmark? They've got four-digit postal codes.

Switzerland does also.

Switzerland worked. I booked another ticket and got to the authentication page for the credit card provider. Thanks for the helpful suggestion.