I have a Qantas Award booking in economy with a CX segment. My Emerald appears to be in the booking but when I tried to select an exit row seat online a charge was being assessed.
I called Cathay and after a bit of to and fro-ing, the seat was selected. But when I looked the booking up online, I saw that while the seat had been assigned to me, I also saw a notation of an unpaid seat charge.
The travel is next year, so I left it for s few weeks.
Now when I look it up there is now no notation that a fee needs to be paid. OK, we'll see what happened next year.