I am looking into tickets ORD-DEL for mid-March and seeing C7. Is this a common occurence to have so many seats open to eVIP upgrades this far in advance?

Of course, he should have. And I'm sure he would have had he known the first agent was wrong. I'm also sure, now that he's read this thread, he will do so in the future.

Isn't FT RULE#1 "Call back if you don't like what the aagent is telling you!"??

As have I. Sometimes the availability comes and goes before EF is aware it existed. I did not intend to imply that setting up an EF alert guarantees results, only that it can help to improve one's chance of securing an upgrade.

IME availability varies so much from route to route, as well as from day to day on a given route, that it would be hard to define anything as common or uncommon.

Actually, that's FT Rule #2. FT Rule #1: "Don't believe everything that you read."

I recently tried to apply an eVIP to an itin where there was no C availability. I have access to SABRE, so went in and look at the reservation to make sure everything was waitlisted properly, and noticed that the EXP agent had queued my PNR to a 'market analyst' after the eVIP was applied and the availability was C0. 6 hours later a comment was placed in the PNR from the analyst: 'can not confirm.' So, apparently, if RM determines that it can't sell the seat for revenue, they will release the inventory and confirm your request. That's probably why upgrades get confirmed even when C=0

Yep, that's pretty well known. But I think folks are talking about upgrades that clear without calls to RM when C=0, which is usually because of expanded (and invisible to mere mortals) C availabilty for EXPs.

That just happened to me. I had already cleared the evip upgrade for my upcoming business trip LAX-SCL (via DFW) on 1/18. My return had not cleared as of this morning. When I checked my reservation this evening (return 1/23-SCL-MIA), my evip had cleared with no notification from EF, even though I had a EF alert set up.

Ding ding ding ding

When EF shows C1, doesn't it mean that it already cleared everyone waitlisted? That explain why you can clear without getting an alert, correct? It doesn't make sense to be waitlisted and get an alert.... I still set up alerts just to make sure that waitlist VIPs are put in place correctly.

No and no. :)

There is often a delay between C availability and C allocation.

EF polls periodically, not continuously.

Eh, I think you and IST_flyer are saying the same thing (i.e., yes and yes). Since EF doesn't poll continuously, it doesn't know when someone clears the waitlist, it will only notice availability if more seats open up than there were people waitlisted. If there are still people waitlisted after some clearing, C will be 0 and by the time EF polls there will be no availaibilty to notify anyone about.

I'm with Gandhi90s on this one, no and no.

EF shows C1 when it finds there is 1 available in the C bucket. Period. It has nothing to do with who has or has not been upgraded (or waitlisted).

While there are times my upgrade has cleared before EF was aware there was availability, there are other times when EF alerted me to availability and I was able to call in and grab the upgrade. Now, it's possible I would have automatically received that upgrade anyway and my call was unnecessary, but I prefer increasing the odds of upgrading however I can, so I set up alerts. EF has notified me of upgrade availability frequently enough that I find it makes perfect sense to use the program. Obviously YMMV.

As I said before, EF availability has nothing to do with the waitlist or upgrades. If there is availability when EF polls, an alert is sent. You seem to be under the impression that upgrades are issued the same instance availability is released. IME that is not how it works and there is frequently a time lag between the two events. It's on those ocasions that EF proves valuable.

My experience leads me to believe that is not always the case.

Yes, I was under the impression that the implementation of the waitlist was (correctly done) such that whoever is first on the waitlist gets served first when availability opens up. It seems I may have been overly optimistic...