Originally Posted by
wooootles
It's paid with cash/CC.
Also, to all who responded - Thanks. But I called 2 more times with the advice given, and the answer is the same: Pay the fare difference. Maybe I need to wait until the "Upgrade with Miles" stop showing up as an option when I pull up my flights on Delta's site/app?
Upgrade with Miles (or Pay with Miles) has no effect on mileage award upgrades - or OY inventory (which I think is pulled from the Z inventory bucket internally). When I was going through this a week ago, the agent I was talking to was clueless and quoted me 280K miles for an upgrade from Premium Select to Delta One for a US-Japan flight. I even asked for OY inventory, and the agent still stuck with the 280K mile quote. I simply said the price was too high and then tried again with another agent and got the upgrade cleared for 45K SkyMiles. It just reeks of poor or inconsistent training. Maybe you should try again until you succeed? Yeah, it sucks, but I can't think of a better alternative because mileage award upgrades require manual processing.