[Eagleguy]

I'd like to explain a few things that happened that day for you. It is true that AA employees don't know how the website works. We aren't ever trained on it nor we do we use it ourselves. However, the agent should have been aware of how upgrades work and broken the news in a better way that your upgrades weren't secured. As a ticket counter agent and a gate agent I have been yelled at a lot when cancellations or delays happen, but I have only used the "arrest" threat once. (Ironically, that was towards another employee who should have known the rules even more than paying passengers.) So unless you were yelling at her and using profanity, she shouldn't have done that. Finally, up until the day of departure the first two rows and last two rows of the aircraft are blocked, so no prereserved seats. This is due to the fact that we may need to allow passengers with limited mobility to sit in the front, and also the last two rows of the aircraft are undesirable. So unless those seats had already been unblocked and given out for legitimate reasons, it would be possible for her to unblock them at the counter and assign your family those seats together. It has happened to me where there are absolutely no seats together, and all I can do is recommend asking someone to switch with you.