Recently on a flight to ORD I was travelling with a colleague (a gold card holder) who came from a different point of origin and on a different PNR. I called the GGL line and asked to connect the bookings so that I would not get an op/up to F on my own as we wanted to be seated together. When we arrived at the gate my colleague had been upgraded to F but I had not. We queried this and the staff member at the gate called operations. They said that had made a mistake as I was supposed to be upgraded and not him but because of the linking they had made a mistake but that they cannot upgrade me now even though there were spare seats in F and none in J. We said we wanted to be seated together so they upgraded someone else and moved the perso nexnt to me to the seat of the person they had upgraded.
Personally I think that was bad performance on BA's part. Mistakes happen but at the point they should have fixed it by upgrading me as well rather than spending 7 minutes shifting all those people including downgrading my colleague.
I mentioned what happened to the CSM who agreed it should have been handled better and he would report it through his iPad. I never received a response from BA even though it happened more than a month ago. TBH I am not going to follow up or pursue it as (a) we wanted to be seated together which we were in the end; (b) operational upgrades are nice but should not be expected; and (c) I get plenty of upgrades anyway.