Originally Posted by malgudi

What now?

I have a PP ticket SFO-EWR-SFO (UA 2065/583 on Nov 23/29), but can't select a seat as nothing is available (other than 3 in Economy and 2 in Business)

Originally Posted by malgudi

This did not end well, here's how it unravelled (a tad detailed, so everybody has the full context)

tl;dr: Paid for PP, flew in E-, got $250 ETC mail on arrival. Is this par for the course? What can I do better next time?

• Couldn't checkin at the 24hr mark as "docs needed to be verified" (US passport, final destination Ghana)
• Thinking this might turn to be a cluster, checked in 3hrs before. Was told since I still didn't have a seat, couldn't be on the upgrade list (!) despite it saying "upgrade requested" on the reservations page
• Was assigned a middle seat in row 60 (the very last row) just before boarding ... it's a looooong walk to the end of the 787!
• GA came by in a few minutes with a better seat (aisle a few rows up ... but still E-)
• Just before the gates closed, GA comes by again and asks me to move to PP as "there's a no show". He said the app would refresh once he got off the plane and fixed a few things (it never did, showed somebody else's upgrade as having cleared into PP). I didn't think twice about this at the time, as I had paid for a PP seat, figured it was a glitch,
• 1hr into the flight, the purser comes by to say there was a mistake and requests me to switch with the guy in E- (the upgraded passenger whose name appeared in the app). The purser happened to be around when the GA asked me to move to PP, so atleast he knew I didn't just move to PP on my own
• Purser was extremely apologetic, filed out the paperwork for ETC which I got on landing.