Originally Posted by ContinentalFan
IMHO, it wasn't a coach ticket. He bought the ticket because it upgraded immediately to FC. If he wanted a coach ticket, he could have bought the ticket at a lower price.
Originally Posted by aCavalierInCoach
The problem lies in this: CO is blind to a customer's reason for buying a Y ticket (flexibility or the auto-upgrade to first class). Since the customer did, in fact, buy it for the purpose of getting into first class, he rightfully feels upset that he has been duped on an element of the bargain.
BUT - CO sees the upgrade to F on a full Y fare as a 'perk' for those paying for flexibility -- much like free upgrades for elites. From a sales point of view, they do not consider it a way to buy into F -- and I think the OP, given his knowledge of how YUPs function should have been exected to understand this.
This is exactly why CO doesn't want to compensate the OP. From CO's point of view, a Y purchase is for flexibility (never mind that there are often H fares that are fully flexible and much less expensive, that may not have been the case in this instance). A benefit of the ONEPASS program is that elites get upgraded to F on a Y purchase. The operations department doesn't really care about the onepass benefits, particularly in an irregular op situation. You purchased Y, that's all you are entitled to. The original poster may have better luck taking up this issue with Onepass customer service as opposed to regular customer service, but again, don't expect much because technically they don't owe you anything.
Now, since the OP was on a full Y fare, s/he obviously could have cancelled upon the downgrade, but I understand that this is not always practicable.
But for the future, know that A fares are often only ~$50-100 more than Y fares round-trip, and I think the difference is usually worth it for 1) the COS bonus miles, and 2) less likelihood of a bump due to irregular ops.