Originally Posted by
TiredOfTooMuchTravel
Also, as has been shown many times, receiving or not receiving the emails is generally not a reflection of if the upgrade system is working or not.
And therein lies the problem. If you receive neither an upgrade nor an email indicating a failed upgrade you have no way of knowing whether the gnome was actually working on your reservation.
I also think we'll find out if your suggestion number 2 above is the issue as I've got a portion of the return flight on Sunday afternoon 2034 DCA-BOS, which I expect to be pretty empty up front. If I have to call for that one as well (I'll make sure to give the second sweep full time to run), it might definitely indicated a problem with the reservation.