So, summary of the airline complaint, going to phoenix, book tickets with American/US Air. Didn't go with Allegiant because after all the pizzing around with paying extra for everything, it's about the same price as the others, plus in-laws live closer to sky harbor than Mesa (majors fly to SH, Allegiant flies to Mesa). Booking, it says select seats at check-in. Knowing we have 2 kids with us and want to sit together, I log in 5 minutes after it opens and there are 4 seats left in the plane, everything else is selected. Plus, they're premium seats, and it says it's like $50 a seat. I'm all...it's the only seats left, it's not like they can charge me for them. So I plow thru, basically the same thing on every leg out and back. I get done, and it says I owe them close to $600...so I'm all heck with this, I'll call them.
So I call them and he's all "well, if you want to select the seats, you have to pay for them." and I'm all "I'm not selecting them, it's the only 4 left!", and he's all, "well, if you want to reserve them, you have to pay", and I'm all "I'm just checking in online", and he's all "well, you can check in at the airport and you won't have to pay, you'll be assigned seats then", so I say fine, we'll do that.
Except, with only 4 seats left so early, it's likely they oversold and won't have any fallout, and we quite likely won't have 4 seats available.