LondonElite: Yeah, I ideally if I could do it again, I would ask the agent to specifically note "customer is not responsible for this charge" on my account notes and then have her read it back to me and then get her name just to be sure. Honestly though, I've been an Amex customer for years and have had nothing but the best customer service from them so I had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. I mean, if things went as planned and we were friends and then I happen to mention what happened to you, you would probably be like "Yep, Amex customer service is great." To your other question, yes, there was plenty of space in business class. It was half full. That this could be done via an after-the-fact points transfer was entirely plausible to me because the upgrade is a zero marginal cost thing. We already had our previously paid for tickets, got into two already empty seats, and then just fell asleep. If Amex tells me they can get that sort of thing paid for with points (via, what I assume is an ongoing relationship with airlines), I had no reason to disbelieve them.