I'm not certain how long ago they put into affect their latest insulting rule regarding bookings but this seems to be another way for them to make traveling on the airlines difficult. You now have to use 2 phones simultaneously to coordinate hotel reservations and ticketing on United. You no longer can hold the ticketfor 24 hours as you make other travel arrangements.

Can anyone try to make a rational argument as the why this new policy makes sense? In the era of seat management and fare adjustments, it seems stupid to believe that allowing potential customers one day to finalize all plans can hurt their load factor or their revenue per mile, unless, of course, enough people decide to use Southwest or a different carrier, which gives you adequate time to make arrangements, for international flights

Holds have value. They obviously have value to you. UA has simply decided to stop giving away something of value. You can still buy refundable tickets.

Take a deep breath. Actually, you can still cancel a reservation and get a refund within 24 hours. So if you buy the ticket then find out the hotel is not available you can call to cancel. And, yes, it does make sense - when you hold a reservation it takes it out of inventory so another customer cannot buy it. Too many people were doing this, and abusing the system by putting several tickets on hold.
My guess is they introduced this change to be in line with the longstanding policy of their new partner, Continental.

It has been six months.

Don't know if UA has anything like this, but on continental.com, one can still hold a ticket until around 5pm next day central time (despite the website saying midnight next day) by using the "Pay with Cash" payment option, and then just go back to complete the sale by other methods.

RAY- Thanks for this tip. I just used it today. So much easier and safer than booking a ticket that I was unsure of!