Originally Posted by
Maclock
And that's how I got things going, with the Alaska gate agent stating in reply that there was no compensation on offer. If some of you think that airline-provided customer service is bad in the United States, it can be down right abysmal in Canada. My assumption -- admittedly my mistake -- was that this was little more than cheap, inexpert, sub-par Canadian customer service in action (as I'm Canadian, I should be allowed to say this), but there was hope that Alaska customer service might do something to rectify it. Lesson learned.
I think a VDB situation is different in that there is no standard, so it's not an issue of escalating to CS to get a by the book resolution. There's no book. It's really a function of need and the circumstances at play and what you can negotiate at that point in time. In one case there could be a favorable outcome (5 hour early arrival) they can start at $0 comp, in another case, they could start much higher.
I had a LIH-SEA-OAK (F on GGU) where I bumped to LIH-SJC Exit Row. They tried the same thing -- $0 comp, you're getting in earlier. I said no, I'm giving up my upgrade and going to the wrong airport. We ended up agreeing on $750 per person + lunch voucher + taxi up to OAK (where my car was). GGUs were returned from MileagePlan.