Held tickets and booking class

[dodgeyhack]

Hi all, got a question about bookings that work makes.
Here's how it works when flights are organised at work. I assume it's the same for many organisations.
The corporate travel agent makes the booking (on QF incidentally). This booking is held for two weeks at that fare (or however long) and once all the approvals at work go through we go ahead with the ticketing.

All this time the flights are visisble in my bookings on Qantas. Seat selections drop a couple of times, I assume as the ticket changes state.

Now the bit I'm trying to understand.
Initially (in my most recent case) the flights listed as 'N' class (Oh no! Can't upgrade I thought).
But after being ticketed they are now 'O' and 'V'. As far as I know the price hasn't changed. Would have preferred to upgrade on the way out, but oh well.
Initially I thought that all 'N' class availability had gone in the time it's took the ticket to be issued, and that the agent had locked in the price but not the bucket it booked into. But expertflyer is still showing plenty of 'N' (QF11 20/10 and QF12 25/10)
So why have the buckets changed?

 

[ozmille]

travel agents will usually try to rebook to a cheaper booking class prior to ticketing, a combination of O and V is about AUD100 cheaper than an N return

 

[dodgeyhack]

Is that to get their margins up?

Being upgradable, V would be more expensive than N though wouldn't it?
O doesn't appear to be available on the way back (I wonder why that would be?).
But why not O and N? That would be cheaper again wouldn't it?

Is the expertflyer order representative of relative value? Looks like it could be.
QF11 = F9 A6 J9 C9 D9 I9 W9 R9 T0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 O9 G0 X9 E0
QF12 = F6 A2 J9 C9 D9 I0 W9 R3 T0 Y9 B9 H9 K9 M9 L9 V9 S9 N9 Q9 -- G0 -- E0