I just requested a NW upgrade with the Onepass Elite Gold line. The first thing the agent did was put me on hold while he "called northwest for the upgrade." AFter awhile he came back and said I was in 3B. Since my last three NW upgrades with continental had gone like this...

--onepass number, name, date, flight
--bunch of typing, agent confirms upgrade
--agent calls NW for seat assignment

...I was a bit suspicious. The fact that he said 3B was the only seat available even though I had just looked at ITN and found only a few seats booked made me even mores suspicious. I looked up the flight using NW's "view reservation" feature and, sure enough, I'm still in 19D. I call NW just to make sure and they confirm that I'm in 19D. They confirm that 3B is taken but won't say who is in it. They also try to tell me that I can only upgrade on day of departure but I ignore that. I call continental back and the agent goes through the usual routine and the upgrade goes through this time.

Has anyone else experienced these kinds of problems? I'm amazed at the vast range of competencies of the phone agents -- some are terrific and some don't have a clue.

I've had onepass "upgrade me" on a NW and find out at the airport that I wasn't upgraded.

This has happened twice, both times, however, NW was able to get me a FC seat.
Clearly, there is a problem here.

I had it happen once on a MSP-SFO flight. CO "upgraded" me, then I called NW to confirm that the upgrade went through, and they showed me as upgraded. When I got to the airport, I got a boarding pass for my, um, coach seat.

NW was able to rectify the error, fortunately there was still a seat in first open.

The upgrade getting blown away between the NW and CO systems is not uncommon. I happened to me last summer going west and I found out then that it pays to check with NW that it went through. Like the others, NW had a seat for me on a very long flight or there would have been mucho aggravation.

And, as I've posted before, quite a number of times I've had exactly the same problem but the opposite way (I'm a NW Platinum so I've called NW to upgrade me on CO flights only to find that I didn't really have an upgraded seat when I arrived at the airport).

What I've been told is that the two systems are very different so even though the CO reservations folks have access to the NW reservations system and vice versa, they often don't complete the process correctly. Neither system is particularly easy.

I've become so frustrated with this on NW's end (as WP Silver) when flying on CO, that I recently asked CO to match my status so I could start using OnePass instead. I realize that the systems are different and it's a difficult task for either party, but NW CSR's have often gone out of their way to "just say no," telling me to call CO instead (when I make it clear I'm not elite on CO) or even going so far as saying they're not supposed to give upgrades on CO. This always gets resolved in the end, but I don't enjoy making multiple calls (and holding) just to find a NW rep who knows how to fulfill the request.

I would suspect in my case, however, that this is due to the lack of a dedicated Silver Elite number at NW. In the old days when I had access to the Gold Line, this always went smoothly. I'm sorry to hear that even the great CO Elite CSR's can't make miracles happen. I'll be finding out soon enough now that I won't be using WorldPerks anymore...

I find these problem to be a major concern.
We are not talking about some little obscure
feature of the OnePass or WorldPerks program.

This is the BIG feature of the program, upgrades. The rules are clearly spelled out
in the program guides.

So why can't Onepass/Worldperks get this working all the time.

Carl's post is most troubling.
For anyone working at Workperks/OnePass to not know the rules for elite upgrades, well that's like someone working for McDonalds not knowing what a Big Mac is.

I flew to New Orleans for the 1st weekend of Mardi Gras. As a CO Gold Elite, I had NO problems recieving the upgrades. ( 4 segments ). And the seat assignments were correct upon check in.

I had one failed upgrade on NW last year. Since then, I have confirmed every upgrade with NW after talking to CO. Every one that I have confirmed has been successful.

But it's clear that there's a problem there...and someone needs to fix it.

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Michael