In the past I have criticized Expert Flyer for not checking available upgrade inventory often enough (and got roundly lashed for it by their Customer Service team that monitors this forum) meaning that I beat them to seeing inventory by way of my regular checks. However, I persevered because I had paid for a year up front and I am glad I did. In the last 24 hours I have had two successes details of which are:

1. I checked for J to F on EK203 later this month at my usual time of 6:00AM yesterday morning and likely would not have checked again until today but at 7:00AM I got the alert on the way to my office and snagged a seat as soon as I got there. As far as I am concerned this one success has more than paid for my annual subscription.
2. Last night I checked in for EKs inaugural flight to Kiev later this afternoon. Before I did so I checked (as I had been doing daily for weeks to see if there was any upgrade inventory for J to F for myself and my wife (they have never even sold any F seats for this flight they had zeroed out the inventory for some reason so did not hold out much hope) and was not surprised to see that there was still no chance so went ahead and checked in. Anyway, at 5:00AM this morning I got an alert from EF that seats were available! Could not do it on line as already checked so called EK and they offloaded us and then rebooked in F - job done!

Thank you EF.

And you were worried about being downgraded !

Haha - well remembered! Would have been nice if we had been and ended up with two free J returns ...