Originally Posted by
appfly
Do optiontown deduct the money from your CC right away or do they only hold your CC number for security and charge it if the upgrade clears? Othwerwise on a IC flight you have to put out the money for a few months if you sign up early for OT.
If you have signed up for OT and paid, can you still decline a upgrade offer? I.e. if you think that there will be op-ups anyway?
The money is deducted from your CC right away and refunded if the upgrade isn't available (less the few EUR upgrade fee). I have had one OT upgrade not happen and it was refunded in my next CC cycle.
I suspect that the float is actually part of the business model: A few hundred EUR X a few hundred customers at any given time is a fair amount of money. Even at today's low rates, the interest would be non-trivial, especially for what is pretty clearly a shoestring operation.
I agree with other posters that OT is legit, i.e. they're not a CC number fishing scam, but that they do seem rather ad hoc/on the cheap.
For example, with one (but only one) of my OT upgrades, I got a message on my mobile that the upgrade had cleared. But the message was incoherent: not so much language (I think south asian accent, but no problem) as rambling, as if there was no script and this guy was just sort of making it up as he went along - that I have business class upgrade, then that he was from optiontown, then that I should go to check-in and then again that there was upgrade and oh it was for my trip to CPH. Not a huge problem, just not a good impression of a smooth professional operation, either.
No, you cannot decline the upgrade.