Hello, first time poster but thought I might be able to add a little info to what is a pretty confusing time for us.

Looks as though as others have said that there are some IT issues with current bookings that is preventing seat selection in seat+ or exit rows, but still 'holding' the booking (ie for my flight to ZQN I am still in 4F, but cannot select anything in seat plus if I try and change it).

Thai Kiwi - in conjunction with this change, Air NZ have also allowed seat selection prior to payment, hence the talk of dummy bookings.

So the reason I think it's just a bug is that if I make a booking for AKL - ZQN return, booking 1 grabaseat, 1 saver, I can choose seat + section as normal. In fact the only difference I can see is that if I want to choose the exit row, it will charge me. But this has been well flagged. FYI I am NZ Silver, Koru.

on a side note, it now deems row 3 on a Q300 as 'preferred' and wants to charge $10. row 2 still available for free. odd.

Hope that clears up for some what is a very murky change