Oh yes.

United.com is clear any PP passenger will clear before a GS. So its not relaly the GA going by their own mind. Whats odd is that the computer supports the GS understanding of always being prioritized even over a 1K in PP. The GA is admittedly following the policy as publicized to the masses.

Yes but GS is unpublished and a lot of the benefits are unpublished.
If the computer says I’m #1 the GA should clear #1.
If not, it opens the door to everything.

Yes there are number of waitlist issue where GS are handled outside the published rules. SUch as GS CPU beats a non-GS waitlisted PlusPoints.

GS, GS supported waitlist are on the PN wiatlist, others are on the PZ waitlist. At the gate when the lists are merged, PN waitlisters are prioritized above PZ.

With GS instruments as a GS on Y fare, I have always been above all PP 1Ks - even at gate. If wait listed with non GS upgrades as a GS, I have always been below PP. Have seen quite a few times for both transcons and international.

Good GS anecdotes that I’ve had recently:
—Agent cleared >72 hours (5 days) into J given wait list was empty. That was a first (and nice surprise). She got approval from a supervisor
—Agent cleared an upgrade for an octogenarian friend (not GS) who was on wait list at gate (4 hours before departure) so she could access Polaris lounge (10 seats open, she was #2)

Bad GS EWR experience last week:
—Flight delayed 4 hours, got protected, gate gave away my protected seat. Walked up to gate (as was in PL) and heard gate agent screaming to someone about protecting me. Then refused to put me on the flight and cleared employees…went to another flight and took a downgrade, that one got canceled. Went back to original 4 hour delayed flight and that was cancelled….was told GS would come help at cancelled flight gate, waited an hour and no one ever came…all mechanical delays and cancellations.

Just had a great experience with a GS agent who helped me pick seats for my parents on a multi-city HPN-ORD-FRA-PMI flight when the website was erroring out. She also proactively checked the reservation to make sure everything was ticketed and confirmed with Lufthansa on the TATL segments.
D***** from the HNL team now based in Florida. The Honolulu-based agents were always so good, shame they dissolved that team and everyone is remote now.

No, because your family were listed with GS PP. If they'd been listed with 1K PP, you could draw that conclusion. But for the purposes of your test, all 4 of you were "GS" through your waitlist for PN.

They will clear a companion on the same flight - you don't even need to be on the same PNR, just need to be (in theory your) GS PlusPoints.

Note - I've gotten one issue with this recently where an agent told me only the GS could be force-cleared. Hung up and when I called back a more experienced agent didn't give any trouble in doing it for my partner who was on a separate reservation.
I've also heard of some agents saying the force-clearing can only be done once per round-trip. This is also not true. Again just HUCA. I was able to force-clear my companion in both directions for a Europe trip last week which came in handy on the outbound as he was the only upgrade that made it. We were on separate tickets but same flights.

For the second time, I had an issue the GS line couldn't tackle because their office was closed. I have to call back before 8pm central when more senior agents are available.

I miss having agents being able to help on my first interaction regardless of time of day or where in the world I was.

How do you know the office was closed? Just based on not reaching GS agents after that time?

I routinely call at ~11:30pm or 12am CT before bed and was often connected with one of this forum's favorite (very seasoned) agents (who sadly is shifting to another team). Maybe that was a one off but my odds are generally just as high that I receive a new or poorly trained or 1K agent earlier in the evening or during the day. It's more driven by how busy the line is versus time of day in my experience.

not my recent experience with an EWR/LIS flight. No GS phone reps available after 1:00am. Only “customer service”

Has anyone received a mid-year GS invite yet? Curious when those tend to go out in July.

After a couple HUCAs I've been told the companion saver benefit is no more (not even a single leg) .... now the only way to do it is economy standard award with GS exception to force the +P upgrade. Still limited to a single leg. If true this has changed sometime in the past ~2 weeks as I was able to do it as recently as then. (The first HUCA was because the first agent said "oh, no, you've never been able to do that" ... the second said it ended a while ago, the third got it done as per above.) Both itineraries are intl long haul many months out, C9 D9 J9, cabins wide open (2-5 seats reserved on 789s).

Comparing the two PNR remarks from today's and the one I did a couple weeks ago, they are completely different. Two weeks ago, booked into IN, remarks included "GS CPN XCPTN" .... today's booked into PN, remark is now "ATTN GS EXCEP DUE TO PURCH OF BUISS TCP" and "GS EXCEPTION"

Anyone else experience the same? If true it's probably the final straw as a GS for me... (I've been hanging on, but my new home airport still isn't back to pre-pandemic UA flight schedule, we have a single CRJ200 at 6am to SFO returning at 11pm and that's it .... and that one has cancelled or caused a misconnect on at least 30% of my flights, badly delayed on even more, so lately I'm either playing the odds or driving 3 hours to SFO to stay loyal to UA, which is rather dumb considering there are convenient and frequent options on AS and AA that would be much more pleasant).

Can you still book the companion on a paid economy ticket and push through a one-way upgrade?

Yes - I did this in the last 3 weeks with no issues. Only in one direction of course which is annoying but it is still a "perk".