Originally Posted by
silent129
I was traveling with my wife and ur itinerary was booked in Q class with systemwide upgrades applied to our itinerary online. We were waitlisted for upgrade which I had verified online and also via the phone with Mileage Plus multiple times. However, at the check-in counter, the agent we were encountered was unable to print out our boarding passes even for our confirmed economy class seats. I am a Premier Executive and so we were helped by an agent that I expected to be a bit more experienced/competent/friendly...
Like
SEA1K4EVR said, the first sign of trouble was the inability to generate BPs for all trip segments when you checked-in online.
I always check-in online, and whenever
any problem of
any kind pops up, I'm on the phone with the 1K desk, trying to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it so that I can have my BPs in hand
before I go to the airport. Sometimes this takes a lot of time, but IME, it's better to solve these problems ahead of time precisely for the reasons that you experienced: You never know what kind of apples you're going to get at the airport check-in counter. You just never know. And when long-haul upgrades are at stake, it just isn't worth rolling the dice. In your case, it's hard to tell what went wrong. Lots of things can cause the situation you describe. Seriously, the best thing to do is solve the problem when you're not under time pressure.
BTW, did you get upgraded in the end?