Originally Posted by
techie
My unfortunate naivety probably
Joking aside, declining a certain benefit to build up a pool of goodwill to make use of at a later point in time makes sense to me. Amazon, for example, give you a few bucks for your pantry shopping if you don't use their rush delivery while a Prime member.
Amazon is explicit about it though. DL is also explicit about upgrade priority and it says nothing about building up credit.
In a way the AA system for non-EXPs is similar in that you have to build up a certain number of credits/"stickers" to be able to receive the upgrade but they still have a priority ordering they follow independent of the stickers (which are just a form of payment).