Cheap Upgrade
 

This is a little off topic, so direct me to the right forum if necessary. My wife and I were on standby on a flight from HNL-IAH, $450/17,500 each. we did not make it, but were checking in on her iPhone and we got a note that we could upgrade to BF for $350 each. Happy, happy us! Cheaper and saved my miles. I thought it was very odd for CO to do this. Opinions? Really enjoy you FFs. This rookie has been getting some great advice.

This sort of stuff has been reported before. Essentially CO lost money in this deal and sold you a cheaper upgrade (when you had originally applied for the upgrade in the correct fashion). Good for you!^

Now, did you get the refund for your 450$ / 17500 miles? If not, you better pursue the refund aggressively. CO is known to be slow on that stuff.

Hi calvert...there are 2 things to explain first when i left england in manchester I mentioned to the check in guy that i got a bargain up grade and asked if my ticket was good as i could not believe it ..He told me on his system it was good and he had no information to change anything as it was a valid purchase.

When in GIG there was a guy on the check in for first class who said that i could not possibly have bought a first class trip for the price I paid and he said he was the most senior guy there ..He told me my printed eticket which was confirmed and I had paid for was only a reservation (Does this mean that every flight confirmation I ever get can be changed if some agent thinks I paid too little for it) He told me i could only travel in coach unless i paid a difference which he would get someone else to calculate..I told him i had accepted an upgrade offer for an exceptionally low price ..but he said that eticketing and seat allocation meant nothing and was of no value what so ever..

Sounds like a rogue employee. Scott definitely needs to look in to this one!!!

No I would not pocket the extra change the clerk handed me. However, if the item valued at $100 was marked $10 and scanned for $10 and the clerk charged me $10 then I would gladly buy it for the $10. That is what happened in this case.

Especially since another CO agent said that everything looked fine. The agent at GIG was out of line. I would have been apoplectic.

Downgrade compensation on a flight thing long is pretty generous on CO. I don't remember the chart, but it's a refund plus a voucher for > $1,000, IIRC.

You can bet that had a rogue agent put me back in coach on one of my DEN-HKG flights I would have been all over this, especially after Scott put a note in my records allowing as to how the fare must be honored. I see little difference here, except no note from Scott.

This story is what's so frustrating about CO. If you get into a bind, it sometimes takes hours to get the right person empowered to do the right thing and make a problem right.

But when it goes the other way, all of a sudden, some random jacka$$ at checkin is all of a sudden empowered to screw everything up in the matter of seconds. Then look at the language used with the poster by the backup in Houston -- "final authority on the matter" and so on. It's almost as if they're trained in how to uphold whatever they feel like.

Yea, that's just wrong. Hey OP...make sure that you follow up on this (tenaciously) and please let us know what happens.

yes, seconded.

Me third, and I want to know what CO WE-CARE-LESS...does for the OP in this situation.

I'd respectfully point out that it wasn't a good idea to ask whether your ticket was "good" - this only invited unwelcome attention to your reservation, and for all we know, agents in MAN could have fired off messages to CO HQ in IAH or to GIG about your booking.

I thought the same.

Subscribed.

Nothing to offer, but I am curious as to how this turns out.