Disillusioned with eupgrade program
 

We are nearing the end of the first month of the new eUpgrade program and I am really getting frustrated with it to the point where I have booked Z for two of my next three overseas trips. Here are some of the reasons for my frustration:

1. The windows. It used to be that you can request an upgrade after midnight of the 7/4/2 days window. That was a fixed time that everyone understood and it worked very well. With the strict enforcement of the 168/96/24 hour rule, you have to remember your flight time to the micro-second. Since the micro-second can kick in at any time you may need a Blackberry in the car as well as an understanding police officer.

2. I just cannot understand why they ask you to indicate if you might request an upgrade when you are booking and not carry the information forward through to the upgrade window. You request an upgrade when you book. You are granted one/waitlisted, depending on availability, when your window opens.

3. The connecting flight stuff is just incredible. You may have in excess of three windows to juggle especially when on-line on a temperamental website. Ever tried contacting the website agent when you have a problem?

4. The eUpgrade arithmetic is annoying. I am forever calculating how many certs I have and how many I need for the next flight. There are pieces of upgrades lying around, none enough to do anything with regardless of fare class. And before you start lecturing me on eUpgrade economics, since January, I have purchased M, S, Z, C and J fares. They refuse to be clear on how many of your certs they will keep if you are not upgraded for a portion of your iternary or how many they will demand if because of arithmetic uncertainty you do not request an upgrade for the local and international portions of an overseas trip at the same time.

5. Part 2 of the annoying arithmetic is the award of certs in units of fives and tens and the charge back in random units in which 5 and 10 hardly appear.

6. Then came the widely advertised "sharing". I thought that sharing as advertised included fractional parts e.g. a spouse could transfer some points to his/her partner to top up. No, sharing means sponsorship. A spouse can only sponsor an upgrade as a whole not a fraction. Fractional shares could have eased some parts of frustration #5.

Yeah, you may think you know the answers to my frustration. Stop. What you think is the answer may not be. Talk to two agents and you get three different answers.

From AC's perspective, then, the new program is working great.

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You did not ask if the Z are booked with AC.

:D

One brilliant idea you alluded to is the concept of "automatic UG". I wish we could request this ahead of the UG window and have the system automatically do this for us. Why do we have to call?

Not to be a troll, but other airlines are able to do this.

Base units of 12 would help
 

Taking the math a bit further....

If the eupgrades were given out in units of 12 instead of 10 or 15, and then the pricing for eupgrades could be 1,2,3,4,6,12 with 'likely' more useful bits left over at the end of the year

17 for a long haul upgrade is a prime number. 14 dosen't divide too well either!

I would hate this - What I want is a system which I can use to my advantage over everyone else!

If 20 E's on a T+ fare are all eligible for immediate upgrade at the same instant how will the system decide?

At least the present sytem rewards those who make the effort to log on at the right microsecond.

This is a good suggestion.

But then what would be the point of the upgrade windows then? AC let's you upgrade at time of booking on a Y/B fare. If at time of booking there is no R space, then you get waitlisted and are upgraded when/if R becomes available. There are your 'automatic upgrades'

The whole point of the windows on T+ fares is to ensure a level playing field:

All SE's can request up to 7 days prior, E's up to 4 days prior, and P's up to 2 days prior, all regardless of when they booked their ticket. You forget to request your upgrade when your window opens? Too bad, how sad.

I do however agree with OP regarding the change to # of hours before instead of days...I think it should go back to 00:01 local time from city of departure as it was much easier to manage that way.

I would really agree with the last part. I have a red eye coming home from LAS next Saturday on an M fare. So if i want to book on the microsecond, I need to be up at 2:20am to get on the list.

Aside from that, I don't mind it too much. After a long two weeks of travel, I decided to upgrade my T+ YUL-YOW at the last second. Wouldn't have used a SSWU, but to burn a few credits (about to cross 40k soon any ways) was well worth it (plus the new food in J is excellent and was a decent replacement for not eating dinner).

I just gave the system a bit of a stress test - bought a Lat TATL ticket, moved it five times and then had to cancel it outright (all thanks to a disorganized client). In the process, I learned that if you check into a flight and then cancel the ticket it won't release your credits automatically, or at least it won't if a travel agent made the request. The system also managed to "lose" three credits in the process. There was no record of any transaction, but my available count was low.

On the positive side, AC was able to fix the canceled ticket while I watched and then re-applied the missing three credits a day later.

The way it would work would be that Lat tickets would be upgraded or waitlisted at time of purchase. T+ tickets would be added to a separate list (let's just call it the T+ list).

At the 7-day window, all SEs on the T+ list would be processed (upgraded or waitlisted) in the order that their tickets were purchased.
At the 4-day window, all Es on the T+ list would be processed (upgraded or waitlisted) in the order that their tickets were purchased.
etc.

That way it's as if everyone requested an upgrade when their window opened, but it wouldn't be a race; order would be determined by ticket purchase date, which seems a little more fair.

No offence, but purchase date is a terrible way to do it. The system they have now does offer the perks depending on fare paid.

Latitude, R and your good or you are put on the list, then the SEs join that list at the 7 day rule for T+, etc. etc....and coming down to the wire, all gets resorted by status, fare class, etc. It does make sense and is fare..I think

The exact our of upgrade kind of sucks when you have a west coast red eye and are still in the east when you have to call in an upgrade.

but....there are worst things in life that getting up for 2 minutes to upgrade and rolling over to go back to sleep

But again, what would be the point of the windows? Sure, your upgrade would not clear until the 'window time' but given how tightly AC controls R space on many routes, there might not be any R inventory prior to the T+ windows anyways.

You're suggesting yet another list, with yet another set of priority rules. If it would be based on the time the ticket is purchased, then if that list would fill up to the # of J seats physically on the plane at like 6-8 months out with let's say all SE, then there would be absolutely no chance for a SE who bought a ticket closer to the date from getting an upgrade, let alone an E or a P, and that's hardly fair.

Plus this would erode the 'instant upgrade request' benefit from those that purchase Latitude fares

+1!

I would rather wake up at odd hours of the night to request the upgrade to influence my order in the waitlist vs. letting the computer do it for me.