Originally Posted by orbitmic

You may well have been, but you are GCH. We should really remember that our experience as GCH/GGL is not the same as that of most others as agents have significantly more leeway in case of "small problems". In fact, even as GGL, in such a case I have sometimes had the fee waived but occasionally been told that the fee would apply and otherwise I could just book online and the agent would do the upgrade (that was from the regular GGL line too).

Theoretically, this is certainly not one of the cases which allows fee waiving (it is only supposed to occur for technical problems with the website which makes booking impossible, and here it is merely a case of the book+upgrade system not picking up special , and I certainly would expect that most regular passengers calling the regular number and asking for the book+upgrade to be done fully by the agent over the phone will be charged the phone booking fee which is what should (sadly) theoretically happen.