I will admit up front I'm too lazy to read/re-read this entire thread. Here's my question:

I had two friends today on a flight with a significant delay. As other passengers were re-routed, F and R space were opened up as the cabin emptied. I attempted to call and upgrade them with expiring RPUs *after* the originally scheduled departure time for the flight.

By the time I called, I could no longer see if there was R space availability as we were past the scheduled departure time. The agent says at that point there was none (but there had been an hour or two earlier). The agent claimed to apply the upgrade, but they *never* appeared on the waitlist. They finally asked at the gate and the agent reluctantly "added" them to the waitlist for the flight where they showed up completely at the bottom of the list (hard to believe as they would be instrument-supported, inherited 1Ks on cheap fares--surely someone else on that flight was hoping for a CPU). They *never* appeared on the mobile app or website waitlist that I could see remotely.

Is this expected behavior or should I complain?