So sorry to hear that John.

None of the airlines are very customer friendly these days. Actually those are better offers than I have had in the past.

I have had similiar situations with American (no air conditioning on a commuter plane sitting on the ground for 90 minutes on a HOT day). Did they care NO, Linda was with us and she wrote in and I cannot remember what came back but NOT MUCH we did not bother to write in on that one.

Qantas - We had a situation on a long flight Auckland to LAX where we paid for a business award but this one leg had not cleared for Ken. We called every day four days before departure, no availability. They confirmed that business class was TOTALLY full on the ground right before take off.

I was in business there were 15 empty seats in business!!! This really upset us, we tried on the plane they would not move him. We paid for business and he ended up (changed his seat also) in a middle seat in the middle group.

We wrote in - our offer 10,000 miles - no other choices! We are both Lifetime Platinum members with American - Qantas is a one world partner.

American has always cleared us in a situation like this - so much for "ONE WORLD" partnerships each airlines does do its own thing.

Airlines are not what they used to be, this is not isolated to United. I like ANY foreign airline (except Qantas now).