I'm wondering about people's experiences with these Copa paid upgrades.

I'm not sure if they're new but I thought it was a brilliant concept. After purchasing my ticket through an OTA I went on the Copa site to try and select my seats. I did so and after that I noticed there was an option to "bid for an upgrade" there's a minimum (I think MIA-PTY was $80USD and PTY-MDE was like $45USD) and you can slide up to a few hundred dollars.

Now I've flown enough on Copa and seen enough empty seats up front that I thought I'd try it. I know they're hard product isn't amazing, but just wanted to try it plus have some food/drink and get off in Colombia first after 24 hours in transit. They say you'll be told one way or the other if you've been upgraded (each leg is separated) between 13-24 hours prior, I've received nothing yet, but I'm only at about 20 hours prior now.

Anyone have any success with these? I tried calling yesterday but she barely knew what I was talking about even when I explained in Spanish, so I figured I'd just wait. I bid the minimum but my thought was "there's usually open seats, the flights aren't usually very full, and they've set a minimum as a price they're willing to accept, so if there's any open J seats I'll get one as long as someone hasn't outbid me".

It seems easy to me and when I looked today there was still like 5 J seats wide open and I hadn't heard anything.

Kudos for the program, another way to generate revenue while losing very little (maybe a better sandwich than the usual one) and some drinks?