Booked my wife on a BXP1A upgrade for an LAX to MCO trip a few weeks ago. Ticket was confirmed and ticketed with seat assignment in business class. Went to check in for the flight today and I was prompted to purchase 5, 500-mile upgrade at $40 a pop for a total of $200. Called meeting services and the rep reached out to help desk. Both were unable to do anything. Told me to send wife to airport tomorrow without boarding pass. I wasn't willing to do that since there is a current operational meltdown and its a short time window that she has to arrive and check in. After 1.5 hours on the phone and speaking to a supervisor who was unwilling to provide a workaround I decided to just pay the $200 and figure it out with customer relations after the fact. What would you have done? Will I have a problem getting the refund?

By the way neither my wife nor I are elite....I have no idea why it was trying to process the upgrade using 500-mile stickers when I had already used a BXP1A upgrade instrument. We live in a new reality where even when customer service reps know the system is broken they have no way to actually fix it. I wonder if this has to do with the shift away from giving agents full access to tickets and gives them a UI that is less functional when it comes to tickets.