That might be more of a statement about what you've dealt with than about United. Their primary concern seems to be splitting you from your money, and only incidentally do they give a damn about the rest of your experience, whether it's about refunds or switching flights or another step. To give one example: I've seen them go out of their way to trick you into getting travel credit instead of a refund to the original form of payment for a fully refundable ticket. And correcting that is a hassle, especially if you were in a hurry trying to buy another ticket.
There are so many variables that go into the more complicated cases than assuming a "trick" is at play.
One of the biggest problems is people booking through 3rd party websites/cheap-online-travel websites and then trying to handle that purchase through the airline instead of the booking company they used. Even then -- before I starting flying frequently and learned paying ~$20 more directly from the airline solved a ton of headaches -- United would try to work with you to get the ticket released (not sure the terminology here) from the booking agent. But I have yet to experience a "trick" from United, or to a lesser extent of experience Southwest or Delta. Some lesser known and foreign budget airlines are another story.
I believe my experiences and if you say that was your experience then I believe yours too. I was commenting on similar stories to yours that I heard/read about that had provided more information -- not yours in particular. Some people have consistently bad experiences with a company that others dont.
Sure but United (or whoever) chooses to sell them tickets and create those experiences.
Delta has a product called Delta Vacations, run by Expedia. All of these things are businesses decisions they decide to embark on with 3rd parties. They promote the integrations. They don’t have to do these things. I don’t mind if they do, of course, but I have 0 sympathy for them if someone has a bad experience on a 3rd party site selling their product.
If I buy something from Amazon it’s no different.
Exactly, if you buy a pair of Nike's from Amazon you don't go to the Nike website to try and get a refund and then say Nike tricked you out of your refund. The problem is for a lot of people flying is so infrequent and usually a major source of stress that they overlook this fact and it's the airline -- not the cheap prices company they entered into business with -- gets the blame.
If Amazon started to ship Nikes with rips or something in them you’d think poorly of Nike first, because you’d assume they sent Amazon a faulty product.
No, I'd think the 3rd party I bought from through Amazon is shady. This literally just happened to my mother in law. We know the quality of the shoes and have seen them first hand. It never crossed either of our minds that the brand was shipping defective product through amazon.