dmorbust

Apologies for the long post, but something that has never happened to me in all my time flying DL just occurred: I got the gate agent to reverse an upgrade decision -

I recently flew JFK-SEA-PVG this past Tuesday because at the time of booking in December, upgrade inventory was available on the SEA-PVG leg - so I immediately took that and then was supposedly waitlisted on JFK-SEA. JFK-SEA did not clear so the day before the flight I got the Diamond line to make sure it had been coded properly; sure enough it hadn't (something about UP2A or UP3A) so they had to reissue the ticket so I could be top of the upgrade list as a Diamond using GUC. From my check-in up until the 45 minute mark, I refreshed the upgrade list almost every minute and was always listed as #1 for 1 seat available. When I went to the gate agent to ask if she had run the upgrade list, she said yes but that I did not get it. Confused I asked for more info and she said that I was currently #1 but that someone else got the only seat available. Now normally I would have just remained confused and let it go, but these were lie flat seats on a relatively long transcon so I called the Diamond Line to see if I could get any other info. Long story short, after asking them to check on seat 3C (the one seat that had been available), the Diamond Line told me that they didn't understand how I didn't get it as that person had been #26 on the standby list. I literally put the Diamond Line phone call on speaker and had the kind lady helping me out speak to the Redcoat. He was moved to make the swap when apparently he realized that the person who got 3C wasn't even a DM so he knew something must have gone wrong. The gate agent ended up swapping our seats. Since my phone captured the last three letters of the person's last name and first letter of first and since I caught a glimpse of the person's full name from the gate agent's screen when I was at the boarding scan area, I decided to google that person and saw from an SEC filing that someone with the same name worked in finance and had served on the steering and restructuring committee of Delta Air Lines in the past - SHENA or just a DL glitch associated with me having cleared first into comfort+ perhaps???

Thankfully I managed to resolve that situation in my favor, when upon landing in Seattle well rested from the lie flat bed, I handed my passport to the gate agent for docs check when she told me I would likely be downgraded because business was oversold by two. I tried to protest saying that I only flew through Seattle since the upgrade was confirmed at time of booking back on December 1st. She kept saying sorry and asked me to wait for a redcoat to speak with me. When no redcoat appeared and boarding began, I checked the Delta app and saw that my business seat was still showing so I decided to board since I figured my boarding pass was still valid. Sure enough I boarded fine and took my business seat, but nervously waited during the whole boarding process for someone to come to my seat and downgrade me. Luckily that never happened, but again more stress. My question in this scenario is who should be downgraded, and what are my options had they insisted on downgrading me?