Originally Posted by
MikeNYC1
If that seat is very important to you, use ExpertFlyer's Seat Alert function to notify you of changes of your seat.
This will only help if the pre-assigned seat was vacant long enough for EF to poll and capture the vacancy before it was reassigned. High chance that all happened quickly and EF would have missed it.
Originally Posted by
Msafiritx
Not exactly. I think Cledaybuck's point isthat advance seat selection has essentially become a paid service, whether you pay separately or as a part of a (more expensive) ticket, or via status. Thus the obligation to honor it should be more than casual.
Well the terms of a specific seat selection fee will allow a refund if they don’t give you a “comparable” seat. You could certainly argue over the definition of comparable if you wanted to and I suspect if push came to shove, you’d get the refund.
As for paying for main cabin vs BE, that’s a little trickier because the fare difference isn’t entirely due to the ability to pre-assign a seat. But if you lost your seat assignment and then there were few or no other open seats to change to, you may have a reasonable argument for a partial refund or some compensation. I do wonder how the DOT or a small claims court judge would view this. I suppose it argues for screen shot-ing the BE vs MC fare comparison.
Also, I’ve almost never lost an assigned seat. Actually my husband and I have an upcoming flight on a 763 up front. Only available window seats at booking were 1A/D and 4A/D so I took 1A/4A and was maybe going to see once onboard if 2A didn’t mind taking 4A instead. But at some point after booking we were moved into 1A/2A. Go figure.