I was the jump-er one time in Denver. I called in while driving to the airport, right at the "3 hour cutoff" and asked to apply an RUC to improve my chances at the gate. The agent messed something up and I realized when I got to the airport that I had lost my seat assignment *and* was not on the upgrade list anymore, either.

I went up to the gate agent about 30 minutes before boarding and made my case, and she called someone on the phone and worked on it for several minutes. When she finished I had a seat up front and was never on the upgrade list in the last 2 hours before departure, and I am pretty sure that they didn't pull a cert that time.

Another time I was flying home from Columbia, SC back when I was still just Gold Medallion. When I tried to check my bag at CAE, they told me that they were oversold and really, really wanted my seat. Rather than offering me money (it was vouchers back then anyway), they put me in a taxi and drove me to CLT, and then put me in FC from there to DTW and from DTW to PDX "for my inconvenience". As we were landing at Detroit I was telling my seat mate about my good fortune & he told me that he and his business partner were #1 & #2 on the upgrade list and couldn't figure out why only one of them had cleared into the two available seats. He didn't seem to be as amused by the coincidence as I was....

And I got to PDX more than an hour earlier than I would have if I had stayed on the original flight.

Sometimes stuff happens that is uncommon. That doesn't make it shenanigans.