Waitlisted weeks ago using a RUC on a flight tomorrow. When to check in online and got "You do not have an electronic ticket. Please check in with an agent." Had both a text rep and a phone rep tell me that I will be able to check in once my upgrade has cleared and the phone agent said the only way I can check in now would be to remove the certificate from my ticket. I have only used RUCs once before and was pending until about 5 minutes before boarding, obviously I was able to check in before then. The idea you can't check in with a pending certificate seems ridiculous. Flight is early morning, so dealing with it at the airport is not appealing. There are still 5 seats available as of now (phone agent first said there were none, so that did not instill confidence). A text agent a few days ago said I was upgraded but not reticketed yet, but today she said that is not the case. Do I keep hanging up and calling again? Any special words I can use to help them figure out how to fix this?

You have be persistent. Call again and again and again until you get an agent willing to help. Most will not. But a few rare ones still will (though they risk discipline every time they help a customer).

Call back and speak to a different agent. Your RUC has cleared and the ticket just needs to be reissued. Say something along the lines of:

�Hi, I�m calling because I�m unable to check in for my flight tomorrow and an RUC is involved and need to get the ticket reissued.�

The agent should have no problem doing this. There is a good chance they will have to contact �global ticketing support� to do this, which can be another buzzword if you get another poor agent. Sounds like you just had two in a row unfortunately.

And lastly, don�t leave this until the airport. The airport agents can�t help with this and it will result in the same phone call, but at a very early time in the morning.

The newer agents are poorly trained in general, but especially so when it comes to RUCs. I had to call in 5 times last time I applied an RUC because I wasn�t moved up on the upgrade list. The first four either told me that was normal (it�s not) or did �something� and told me it would update soon (it won�t).

The final agent had been there for a while, and bemoaned the lack of training for newer agents. 30 seconds later she had it all cleaned up and I was #1 on the list. Unfortunately you just have to keep trying.

I *think* something has changed in the background for RUC processing. I had a situation this past week where the text agents said something to the effect that we were cleared but awaiting processing, even though online it showed nothing. Got that response from three different agents.

Check-in arrived and was unable to do so. Called in. Got it escalated. We were indeed upgraded, but it took about an hour to "reinstate" the upgrade certificate (RUC) and get the reservation reticketed. Apparently, there is a way for it to clear in the background but not show online and not generate a ticket being issued. But in my case, the upgrade certificate was closed out even though the ticket never got reissued. Therefore, the agent had to get the upgrade certificate recovered then do the reticketing.

It just keeps getting worse.

If requested online during booking, I've found it totally hit or miss. This week, one should have cleared at booking. It didn't, I didn't notice. When I called in after checking in, agent just kept telling me "you'll probably get it". When I explained I was 9 on the upgrade list and that didn't seem right, she had no idea why that would be odd. Eventually convinced her to keep trying, she realized that there was space available immediately, put me on hold for 30 minutes, came back and it had cleared and the return RUC was applied correctly at check-in for wait list.

Some additional recent discussion on this topic in the master RUC thread.
Using Regional Upgrades on Delta (RUC) post 2/1/2022

^^ This. I�ve told agents before �I�ve previously had this happen before and the issue is always that the ticket needs to be re-issued. Can you reach out to Global Ticketing Support?�

enjoy the upgrade!