Originally Posted by mannimagus

Upgrade given: Y - J
Upgrade location: Transfer desk
Route: DXB-LON
Flight number: EK029
Type of ticket: ECONOMY FLEX Plus
Date of travel: 23 Aug 2018
Tier status: Gold
Tier miles to date: 67899
Skywards miles balance: 95477

Number of pax on the same PNR (Including OP): 1
Number of pax upgraded: 2 (including my wife who is a Blue member and was on a different PNR).

This was a very interesting op-up experience at the transfer desk in DXB. During check in for BLR-DXB, I was given a standby boarding pass for my onward leg DXB-LHR, and was told to re-check upon landing in DXB. I landed in DXB, went straight to the transfer desk and was promptly upgraded to J. Since there were 3 of us travelling on 3 different PNRs and I did not want to be separated, I requested the agent to accommodate all of us in J (I knew was a super long shot, but decided to try anyways).
My wife was immediately upped, but my friend who was on a saver ticket was not. The agent then asked me again if I wanted to travel as a group and not split, and I again asked her to re-check if we could all get upped, and if we couldn't all go then we'd decide. She spoke to someone on the phone, hung up and then asked me if we were OK with different seats, to which we said it's fine (naturally we assumed she had upped us all to J, and different seats wouldn't be such a big deal). She re-printed our passes and handed them back, and that's when I noticed she had put us ALL back on economy.
At this point, I was cut up because she had not conveyed the final position before re-allocating the seats, and asked her what she had done. She seemed to have realised her mistake and immediately put me back in J, my wife on standby and my friend remained in Y, and asked us to re-check when we were exiting the lounge to board. Sure enough, my wife was confirmed in J with me and my friend had to "slum" it out in Y.
Weird experience, a bit of a departure from the normally smooth agents in DXB.