Regardless of computer error my question is: why even put the upgrade:denied option into the system? Is that what it says when there are truly no F seats available? IME, I've seen upgrade: waitlisted while the flight was F0. The computer didn't just randomly come up with that. Someone had to put that in there. Why would they do that?
Someone who manages this has to know it is happening. All .bomb jokes aside, is it really that difficult to fix? Pay some IC $6,000 to fix it in a day. They will save a lot of money from not having to take calls from all elites asking what the he** is going on. I bet I could get a computer science student here to do it for $2,000.