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Sorry, a bit of a rant as a lifelong BAEC member (status matched to BA FC Gold), but what a palava!
Firstly, I included my wife yesterday into my Household account as she’s flying tomorrow on a cash ticket in PE.
I messaged FC this evening using their chat function asking for cost in points to upgrade. Was given a bargain price of 20k and so I transferred VS points using AMEX MRs into her account and when I realised that (unlike BA’s HA) i had to authorise the use of the Household Account points as the Household Leader, I called in. Within 10 mins, price to upgrade had jumped to 96k. As expected, I was told this was due to dynamic pricing but how can you justify it, when a seat in UC on the same flight for points only was available for 76k points? The guy on the end of the phone was of no help explaining the illogical pricing.
Just tried my luck again after a couple of hours, and the pricing is down to 56k points but the agent would only quote for the upgrade after knowing the FC account that the miles were coming from. I found this puzzling – why is this relevant if the cost of upgrading depends on dynamic pricing of available seats?
All in all a frustrating process that takes too long whether by phone or chat with ridiculous price volatility.
The starting fare bucket is likely the reason, but it sounds to me that the first person had their maths wrong. 20,000 for a jump to G from rev. P is cheap, even in the old world. Typically, agents want to know that they’re going to be calculating it for someone who actually has an account, or has at least some likelihood of the balance being available, before they’ll do the work. You do get agents who don’t want that, but I can see why they do.
I’ve read a couple of times (I think one mention was by Rob) that upgrading from a cash fare is a bit of a nightmare now because it involves some sort of re-pricing – possibly depending on the original points price of the cabin you’re upgrading from 🤷♀️. Anyway, a few people have reported being frustrated by the process!
To upgrade a cash ticket they take the standard reward pricing for the sector and then charge you the difference to the current dynamic price for the cabin you want.
It’s not particularly fair (ie a very expensive PE sector is only converted to the same points value as a very cheap PE sector, whereas it should really be dynamic if the upgraded cabin price is dynamically priced too!) so it makes more sense to book a long time in advance.
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