I popped down the pub recently to chat to a couple of friends who were thinking of doing a Tier Points run to get from Bronze to Silver/Gold and ended up booking myself on a separate locator but on the same outbound sectors.

My friend, who seemed far better versed in the perks of being a BA Gold than yours truly, suggested that I - as a Gold Card Holder - may like to arrange for his allocated seating on the westbound transatlantic AA6164/BA213 to Boston. Same flight, same class.

I called BA Gold line initially and after the usual er...oh...hmmm...can I put you on hold...they decided that they couldn't assign seats for my friends because of data protection.

Friend calls up BA and gives authority for me to assign seats. Is told it is added to their record.

I call up, go through it all again and am told that they are unable to do it at the call centre so they will 'send it off for processing'.

A month later, nothing has been done, so I resort to email asking why it's not been actioned. I get a reply saying that (a) BA can't assign seats by email and (b) that I am wrong and can't assign seats for anyone else anyway

I call BA again. This time I am told - after 20 mins - that they can't assign seats for my friends because we all booked on aa.com and they 'have control of the booking'.

I call AA. Attitude was better and they didn't fob me off, said that they could see the seat map for my booking but couldn't see the seat map for my friends (presumably because they have different status). After a while, AA tried to fiddle/link/various acronym things with both bookings and eventually 'sent off the request'.

Still no joy. Friends now thinking they'll just pay the £60 to choose a seat.

Has anyone else out there had a positive outcome? And if so, any suggestions that I can make to an AA or BA agent that may actually deliver on one of the stated benefits of being a GCH? I must have spent 2 man hours on the phone already trying to fix this....gets me out of doing housework I suppose....

thank you
Ian