I hear you loud and clear DenverF9Flier. Experienced the same thing recently when trying to bring the family up to Stretch.

The aggravating thing is when we checked in at the airport (had luggage) roughly 60 minutes before the flight, there were 20 seats available in Stretch. Of course, I could have gone up for free, but they wanted to charge for the wife and kid. Decided against it and kept our seats in row 6. When we got on the plane, every single seat in Stretch was taken. I figure they were just given to those folks who didn't have a seat assignment when they checked in. Maddening to say the least.

I really hope they don't start nickel and diming us Ascents and start relegating us to 29" seat pitch seats.