I can sympathise with people but I really do not think I could complain much about something that has brought within my reach what would otherwise have been out of reach (although that is not the case with me and perhaps that leaves me leaning towards "money saved" angle).

Availability issues are not unique to BA. Most schemes would have some kind of availability issues, although QFFF gets around this problem with "any seat award" where you can redeem for any seat on QF but it can be for a horrendously (and I really mean it - I have seen something akin to 1,000,000 points for an F seat SYD-SIN or something similar) high number of points. Perhaps BA could introduce something similar for those who have a large number of miles but cannot find availability.