The Unfriendly Skies

I had absolutely the worst customer service I have had in the 21st century from United Airlines. I am a frequent United flier. I chose them as what I have seen as the lesser of the airline evils. A position to be re-evaluated. I like their seating with extra leg room, and I usually do not find their service any worse than any other airlines (certainly better than my experience flying Iberia two years ago, for example). But my most recent interaction with them makes me think we have a looming problem with customer service in general, and that United needs to do what Starbucks did a few years ago--send their employees back to service boot camp so they can recall where they salaries come from. Paying customers.
I was flying to New Orleans with two of my children. When I made the reservations, I paid extra to have all of us in the front of the plane, and was looking forward to the trip, despite a 6:00 am flight and a lengthy layover. When I went to check in, I found that we were seated in the next to last row of the plane. What happened?
Perhaps I should not have asked that question, because I spent the next two hours on the phone with "customer service", ending up exactly where I started off in terms of seating, but I had gone from puzzled to infuriated. United contended that I had made the change myself. Their computer stated that the change was made on Sunday, and that was that. I said, no I did not make that change, and really, who would do that? It makes no sense.
Their response across the four employees that I talked to was remarkably similar--not a one of them apologized for what might have been an error in their system. I have encountered an error on their web site on a regular basis recently, and the whole system went famously down just over a week ago, but that was not an option considered by the United employees I spoke with. They stated that people often do not know how to work web sites, that people often make stupid choices, that perhaps my 20 and 22 year old children were unfamiliar with the internet and had made the change if I had not, and that perhaps my veracity was less than stellar and I was blaming them for something that I had done and now regretted. And no, they did not think I would be refunded the money that I had spent to get better seats, since I subsequently made a choice to sit in less spacious seating (I did not ask when in the conversation I appeared to be masochistic to them--clearly the computer was right, and therefore there were very few possible explanations for my irrational behavior).
In the course of not helping me, as well as bringing me to shouts, murmurs, and tears, they also canceled my seats--which undoubtedly was also my fault.
I will of course write a suitably worded letter to United and will receive a polite response, which will undoubtedly include an apology, but is that really the point? No, it is not--the point is that no one I talked to acted as if it was their job to get me onto the plane in the best possible manner given the constraints that existed--no, I could not have my original seats, but what could they do instead? Not a consideration--they did not look at the story as a whole. Maybe I am a person who can't turn on a computer, makes ill-conceived choices, and am prone to blaming others. But that shouldn't be their first thought.