I hope you said that with a smile. In my view, getting back the milage for an upgrade that didn't happen is not compensation, it's standard practice. As to the 3 upgrades on the return flight, perhaps you could call that compensation, perhaps you could call it a payoff, perhaps you could call it a bribe in the hope it wouldn't go any further.

And in my view, it's shenanigans whoever was assigned the upgrade after the fact. If it was a buddy of the agent or a non-rev, it was shenanigans; if it was a plat. and the gate agent thought she was "doing the right thing" by reordering the list to take away an upgrade from a non-elite and give it to an elite -- that's still shenanigans. ANd they obviously knew it with the offer of 3 upgrades on the return trip.