I ran into this a couple of years ago - received differing advice from call centre vs. what actually happened at check-in and nearly wound up paying the airport rate for a bag.

Air NZ still generally provide you the upgraded allowance on a pending upgrade (or at least they did 2+ years ago), but only on long haul routes, I was told when I followed up post-flight. So on a short haul flight, I suggest upgrading to a Seat+Bag fare if the upgrade is still pending within a few days of the flight.

I am not sure whether the "long haul" rule would apply to HNL, DPS etc, but I suspect may be a S2S vs non-S2S rule.