I had some family members flying UA last night to visit but they misconnected and were rebooked for a flight this morning, they were flying on my miles but have no status. I called the premier line to have them rebooked and the agent said she could give them window/aisle seats in E+ for free since they were my guests and the only non-E+ seats available were middle seats. They then checked into these flights and received mobile BPs with the E+ seats. However, when they went to board this morning, they found out that their seats had all been changed to the empty E- middles, and the seats on the mobile BPs were empty. They were told at the airport that they needed to pay if they wanted to sit in the seats that were on their mobile BP from the night before.

This strikes me as an odd things for UA to focus on stopping, considering that the seats they were booted from went out empty. I have had success with this request before (free upgrade to E+ for non-status when rebooked due to IRROPs and no decent seats left in E-) so I'm wondering if the agent I spoke with got super-ceded by a supervisor or do they have some kind of nightly auto-audit now to remove unpaid customers from E+.