I too have had this problem, but only recently. Seems to be an issue with having mix of Gold with Silver/Blue/no status on same PRN. Gives me gold seats no problem if I am only one on booking, but is clearly not casting the gold halo over others on the same PRN (as the new policy, amended after all the complaints, is supposed to).

Seems for some of us we are back to the old, new policy, although a call to BAEC can get you allocated the gold seats. I too was told something about already having been assigned seats being the issue. If that is so, why can I move around any of my solo bookings to gold seats and any joint bookings with non-golds to any non-gold seat. Looks to me like the patch applied to allow non-golds on same PRN as a gold access to gold seats has become unpatched somewhere along the line.