You should instruct your travel agent to call AS after every reservation is ticketed (give him/her the MVP/Gold # if they don't already have it) to ensure that you are properly waitlisted for the upgrade. The "other" column doesn't seem to be exclusively for agency bookings either. Right now I have 3 reservations sitting in the "other bin" two of which were ticketed by Alaska on the AS.com website. One is the return half of a r/t ticket that has been changed a couple of times (all w/AS flight #s on AS metal) and the other is a domestic partner award that has inexplicably bounced back and forth from "purchased" to "other" every time there is a minor schedule change. The third is a codeshare itinerary with AS operated flights purchased on AA.com. SO, what is "other" for? Beats me.

As for the original topic of this thread, I too had an issue with changing seats on AS.com. I saw that an exit row aisle had opened up on one of the AS operated AA codeshares. Although the "change seats" option had displayed before it was nowhere to be found. After calling MVP/Gold to request the seat change (the res agent was unaware/uninformed of any issues with this either, as seems to be the case with most issues at AS - inter-departmental communications must be horrible at that company) I went back online to check if the seat change was reflected in the reservation and not only was my new seat assignment there but - voila - the "change seat" option was back. Just another one of those odd glitches I suppose.