Man demands airline give him a refund on his seats, staff says that's against policy.

I (35 M) held up a flight because the airline tried to take away the seats that I paid extra for.

Illegaldesi writes:

This happened two weeks ago. I( was on holiday with my wife (32F), and we had an 8-hour flight ahead of us while returning. I usually plan and select the seats and meal plans, so there's no hassle.

Since we didn't have check-in luggage and everything was in a small carry-on for both of us, we decided to skip the queue and went to the automated kiosk to print our boarding pass. When I printed it out, I noticed the seats were not what I paid for. Moreover, they separated my wife and me by seven rows; even worse, they were both middle seats.

I was confused at this point and went to the check-in counter. They told me they made the switch because some couple with a small kid asked them to be seated together. I tried being civil with them by explaining that I paid for those seats, and they couldn't just give them away. However, they kept insisting that they had no seats to spare.

So I held up the line(there were only two counters, one was closed, and I was on the other one) by saying that I'll consider those seats they allocated if they refunded me the charges I paid for the seats. That caused a big argument because they said it was against their policy; this went on till the ground manager came in 20 minutes later.

By that time, the line was getting impatient, and one guy came up to my face telling me to move, in which I told him whether he wanted to try his luck in a heavily guarded and police-protected airport with so many cameras around. He backed up, thankfully.

The ground manager was friendly and apologetic for the staff's behavior and gave me a free upgrade to business class and five 20% discount vouchers to use next time. While stepping out of the line, I could hear the murmurs of the annoyed passengers.

Interestingly, they still didn't have the second counter opened up to ease the passenger flow. So WITA for asking what I thought was rightfully mine?

Here are some of the top comments from the post:

VolatileVanilla says:

NTA (Not the A%#hole). They didn't open the second counter because they were understaffed, thoughtless, or counting on peer pressure also not your problem, but good for you for standing up for yourself.

The other passengers were annoyed because they had to wait, and they didn't care if you were being treated unfairly, which is, you may have guessed, not your problem. Whose problem is it, then? The airlines. They tried to make it your problem, but you didn't let them. I'll say it again: Good for you.

j0s3f says:

NTA. They should have handled this better, by opening the second counter or directly getting the manager who could handle this with you without holding up the queue. You were right demanding your money back, if they didn't provide the seats you paid for to you.

jr_Yue says:

NTA. Airline companies constantly do sh%t like this because they think they can get away with it. The fact that the manager was so apologetic isn't because he thinks you're in the right, but because he saw that their first response of trying to deny you your rights didn't work, so he had to 'show belly' in order to appease you and avoid having to *actually* offer proper repair for your trouble.

Bet you he started sh#t-talking you the moment you weren't in ear-range anymore. Also, the other customers in this situation are 100% the AH too because when that kind of sh%t happens, you don't get mad at the person who's rightfully asking for the company to fix their mistake.

You get mad at the company for trying to scam a customer, and thus creating a bigger line because they're now taking so long to fix an issue that should be repaired in under one minute.

You give seats away, the ACTUAL 'owner' of those seats comes up and tells you 'No, these are my seats', you go 'okay' and f%cking give their seats back. That family with a young kid is at fault for not reserving proper seats sooner.

What do you think? Was OP an AH for sticking up for himself, or should he have just accepted being treated that way.