Ouch, that sounds bad. You've made 12 upgrade attempts and none came through?!

Can you comment on the routes?
I had a close call from ARN but upgrade cleared a few days before.
As for Star in the Nordics, it is possible some other Star operator might increase traffic to replace lost agreements with SK. So it isn't a given that Star Gold will be useless for regional flights from Nordics.
Also, there will be some odd cross-alliance cooperations. For example, I think I saw there will be a SK/A3 cooperation. Such flights could either be good or bad news depending on how they are set up. (eg Skyteam flights sold with Star flightnumbers or v.v.)
I'm just saying it might be good to wait a bit more before deciding on usefulness of Star.