Excuse Me...$25 to Make a Reservation?

United Airlines (and a few others) have decided to make lack of customer contact and service an art form.  You now have to pay $25 for the privilege of holding on the phone for 15 minutes if you are lucky and speaking to somebody who doesn't exactly have a great command of English - even if the web site instructs you to call reservations because your itinerary is too complicated or you have a special need.    Worse yet, if you need to contact the airline over the weekend in Buenos Aires they have a telephone recording "inviting" you to call international long distance for the privilege of holding so you can speak to somebody in Manila.  Yet, we passengers put up with this...but United needs to know that internationally, at least we don't have to - we can fly the friendly skies of Lufthansa or Etihad or LAN where the passenger is still treated like a guest.