When I called today to check on my upgrade, I asked for a supervisor. Talked to Miss Grayson who assisted me with my upgrade. She also told me that there was a conference call on Tuesday night about EUA with managers from Tampa, Houston, and Salt Lake. It also included Larry Kellner (president of CO) and it reportedly lasted from 3pm until 7pm. Miss Grayson said that Mr. Kellner gave a 48-hour ultimatum to get the EUA fixed, or take it down completely, and "quit ticking off" (his words quoted by her) CO customers.
I'll bet there are some folks in IT putting in voluntary unpaid overtime tonight, whattaya bet????

Cool beans MEBenson...thanks for the info.

About time... I am at the end of my fuse with EUA. In my travel group we have 6 Platinums and we are all less that 50% on upgrades this year.

I called Delta today and am sending them all our info to see if they will comp us to Platinum. If so it may be so long Continental.

What Routes are you Flying ?

My EUA % is 16/20 80 %

My actual upgrade % is 19/20 95 %

(Already have EUA's for the next two flights which will make me 18/22 [82 %] EUA and 21/22 [95.5 %] upgraded)

Of the four non-EUA's One Coach, Two immediately upon check in and one rescue from the back of the plane.

Be careful what you ask for regarding Delta.

Delta limits the number of upgrades by using 800 mile segments, which are awarded as you accrue miles. The critical part is they are useless if you are flying L or U fares, the equivilent of Continetal Q or T's.

They will fly the seat empty or bumb a non-rev employee rather than allow their loyal customers sit in FC with a deeply discounted ticket.

I would be curious if your problem is route specific.

------------------
"A Southwest line never gets longer, It only gets wider"


[This message has been edited by dcwcce (edited 03-13-2002).]

Will update w/ more info later... EUA ran at 3hrs prior to departure, but did not include me (a Platinum)...

I arrived at the airport and there was (1) seat in F (A1 F1). No one can explain to me how the system re-ran, upgraded Silvers and Golds and skipped me, but kept a seat open

yesterday for a flight I didn't get EUA... before the boarding my first flight, the connecting flight was A5 F0, when I landed 1.5hrs prior to departure it was A0 F0...

I'm getting pretty ticked off again!

I personally like EUA. No more midnight calls to the hotline. EUA might have some issues needed to be resolved, but it beats staying up until midnight and waits another 20 minutes until it's your turn to talk to the agent.

Check the Delta board and you will read the heat about the LU non-upgradeable fare. I know quite a few people switched from Delta to CO for this reason. People on CO board complain that HoKeY fare, but at least you can pay extra to buy the upgrade with miles. Delta's L/U is absolutely non-upgradeable.

What fare codes were you on?

CLE-LAS 4 of 8
CLE-IAH 1 of 2
CLE-LAX 0 of 4
CLE-FLL 1 of 2
CLE-TPA 1 of 2

What I like about Delta is that you can get the upgrade at the time of booking (as long as you are Platinum Medallion) and are traveling on fares other than L/U. I priced out the fares (on Delta) that I have coming up and they average about 125.00 more than Continental's fares. These are upgradeable. If Delta gives us (about 8 CO Platinums in my office) Platinum I'll probably switch. If not I'll switch to AA, and do a Platinum Challenge or see if they'll comp us.




[This message has been edited by RW (edited 03-13-2002).]

Similar story with a friend of mine... Flying from CLE-FLL the flight was F7 A0 for most of the week leading up to the flight. On the morning of the flight I called and got upgraded over the phone (lucky me) my friend who was travelling with me had to sit in coach. I did a quick poll (3 people) in FC to see how others got upgraded: 1 Silver via EUA, 1 Gold and companion at the airport, and my buddy who is Platinum in 21C.

A day late, and $50,000 short...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum20/HTML/004684.html

I guess I am lucky I am NW Platinum. Whenever EUA doesn't catch me for a CO flight, the NW Platinum desk has been more than happy to upgrade me. As, I have heard stories about CO agents refusing to do manual upgrades.

dirt cheap...

I called and complained a bit about this process today... after two straight days of having EUA run at 3hrs and me not getting a seat either time I had enough...

here's what I was told:

1) EUA is run by status
2) INTRA-status upgrades are selected "by fare basis"... period! not date of purchase, nor any other criteria. But, no one can explain how Silvers were upgraded and a Plat was not
3) something along the lines of "better luck next time", or words to that effect.

PS they really need to get their house in order over there... for the second time in a month an agent manually updated my deep discounted fare (Q/T/V) by pulling seats out of the A bucket because I am Platinum and that was their understanding of how this works... I'm talking about an upgrade *outside* the Plat window and the availability at A9 F0.

kinda sad when you know the rules better than they do...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're tryig to say above: Did you specifically request an upgrade outside of your Platinum window, or did the agent volunteer to do this in conjunction with some other issue that caused you to be in contact with them?

This latest one was done at the airport... I had causually mentioned that CO was "hording" the seats for this particular flight. I was willing to use miles, but I couldn't even do that because there were none in F.

The agent looked it up, agreed A9 F0, but then stated, "well I can upgrade you right now." The reason given was because of my status, etc... there was no undue harship that they were trying to make up for...

As I suspected, I think this explains why some plats have much worse upgrade records than others. Not that plats on low fares will never get it or that plats on high fares will necessarily get it since it depends on the number in the waiting list at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if the arport list (intentionally or because of a bug) was ordering based on fare code across status as well.

I think it is becoming clear that, in CO, low fares (domestic or international) have a lower status (shall we say "riff-raff" status) than any elite status regardless of your prior history.

This might be a rational thing to do for CO but no point in leading people on with false understanding. They are flirting dangerously with "truth-in-advertising" laws.