Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan - Change or Cancel Flight and Lose Use of Gold Guest Upgrade Use

I didn't see anything in the Gold Guest Upgrade rules on the site about this, so I wanted to ask.

I want to change a booking I made for my wife and son on which I used my Gold Guest Upgrade to move them to first. The agent said I'd lose the Gold upgrades. Not lose, as in a Guest seat may or not be available on a different flight. Lose, as in the upgrades will not be redeposited in my account and they're just gone.

Again, didn't see anything on the site about this and that just doesn't seem right? Is it?

Thanks

I didn't see anything in the Gold Guest Upgrade rules on the site about this, so I wanted to ask.

I want to change a booking I made for my wife and son on which I used my Gold Guest Upgrade to move them to first. The agent said I'd lose the Gold upgrades. Not lose, as in a Guest seat may or not be available on a different flight. Lose, as in the upgrades will not be redeposited in my account and they're just gone.

Again, didn't see anything on the site about this and that just doesn't seem right? Is it?

Thanks

See:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alaska-airlines-mileage-plan/1249255-guest-upgrade-shopping-alaskaair-com.html

The MVPG guest upgrade rules on the AS site don't list this; in fact, I see the following at the top of the page with my upgrade codes:

Once a MVP® Gold Guest Upgrade is applied to a reservation, no flight changes are allowed. Only MVP® Gold members may contact Customer Care by phone or email for a replacement code.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3)

If you cancel a ticket with the UG cert applied, email customer care and ask for a new certificate.

I've had this happen a couple times and the new one is in there within a few days.

What the phone agent told me (after checking with someone else twice), is that they will redeposit if asked, but only for the MVPG's ticket. She specifically said that the MVPG can't call and have the guest upgrade put back into the MVPG's account if the ticket that was upgraded was for someone other than the MVPG.

Would be really nice to have this clarified. I'm still not sure what the answer is...the wording on the site is vague, sounds like others have had good experience having customer service take care of the issue, yet customer service says the policy is something different...

What the phone agent told me (after checking with someone else twice), is that they will redeposit if asked, but only for the MVPG's ticket. She specifically said that the MVPG can't call and have the guest upgrade put back into the MVPG's account if the ticket that was upgraded was for someone other than the MVPG.

Would be really nice to have this clarified. I'm still not sure what the answer is...the wording on the site is vague, sounds like others have had good experience having customer service take care of the issue, yet customer service says the policy is something different...

They are guest upgrades - meant to be used for someone other than the Gold member. Don't let AS' IT implementations decide their policy. If you upgrade a friend or family member, and that flight has to be changed, you as the Gold member have a right to recoup the upgrade code in your account. You do have to call to do this.

The thing they won't do is reissue the upgrade code to the someone other than the original Gold member that earned it. This is to prevent fraud/abuse.

They are guest upgrades - meant to be used for someone other than the Gold member. Don't let AS' IT implementations decide their policy. If you upgrade a friend or family member, and that flight has to be changed, you as the Gold member have a right to recoup the upgrade code in your account. You do have to call to do this.

The thing they won't do is reissue the upgrade code to the someone other than the original Gold member that earned it. This is to prevent fraud/abuse.

That makes perfect sense. How does the OP get AS to do the sensible thing?

That makes perfect sense. How does the OP get AS to do the sensible thing?

Change the flight as required. (The upgrade will be lost immediately.) Then call up and ask for a new upgrade code. Escalate if necessary.

Good luck, josh. I hope you get a more well informed agent the next time you call.