Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
The moral of the story is that making redemption bookings has various hurdles, which means it's not always guaranteed to get confirmed; whereas cancellations are both easy and non-reversible. And can be done online. I take what you say about not having enough Avios to do it the other way around, but it is a terribly complex way to travel. Therefore if you're OK with the complexity then you either need more Avios in your account and/or accept that sometimes things fall apart.
I agree it's a lesson learnt (with a pending outcome), but the way the call went lead me to believe these seats are held whilst he does the other things (to reduce the amount of Avios I need to transfer from Nectar). If he gave me this warning, I would have transferred the full amount - it's not worth the hassle. I do feel for the agents right now with the recent changes. It seems they had no 'heads up' or training, and that combined with the amount of vouchers - it's a real pain.
I think I'm more flustered about this than other situations is due to the fact I'm departing next week, and things are up in the air right now.
I also thought there is a way agents can commit a change or reverse a change (I may have read this in a similar thread to mine). The problem I have is the first agents attitude to the situation. The second agent was perplexed (lets say) at how things were done / why they were done this way.