My husband and I are flying Madrid - JFK (home) on Jan. 19th. Booked on AA but Iberia is the air company. I had to pay for seat assignment, so I did. However, when I recently looked at the seat plan of the plane I realized that my husband and I have seats in the middle and are separated by a seat between us. (There are four across). Additionally, there are two seats together at the window areas on the sides aavailable. Many of them. When I first chose seats this was NOT the configuration. Had it been, I would have chosen the two seats together rather than in the middle.
Anyway, I called Iberia to change them to aisle/window and I was told I couldn't over the phone and I could only change them at the airport. Who knows if there will even be seats we want once we go the airport on the day we fly? Or, I was told, I could pay for the new seats. In other words, I would be paying twice for seats.

I have never heard of this policy. Can someone explain? The customer service agent over the phone couldn't.

I am not saying this would actually work. But you might try. Find your Iberia ticket number and/or Iberia record locator. It might be on your original AA reservation confirmation or receipt. Or you might have to phone AA and get it from them. Then use your Iberia ticket number or Iberia record locator to sign in on Iberia website, find your reservation there and change your seat assignment on line. This method has worked for me to get a seat assignment on a code share when I otherwise had no seat assigned. Or if you are calling AA anyway to get that Iberia information ask AA if they know how you can change it with Iberia.

I have the Iberia locator (booking) number and amazingly when I went into the Iberia site it didn't recognize the #, and that's why I called Iberia.

I'm not sure I follow the point about the configuration change. Are you saying the aircraft type changed from what you originally booked (if so, equivalent seats would have been automatically booked on the new aircraft) or have more seats become available for prebooking since you originally booked? Did you book your original seats thru AA or IB?

The IB website states that you can't change your choice of seats until 24hrs before departure but you might get a reimbursement of seat charges if there was a change of aircraft and equivalent alternative seats could not be offered.

I would try calling Iberia again. Our son recently flew Iberia, had trouble with long holds. Eventually got varying responses to a different situation. The last person, whom he was surprised to reach quickly, handled everything to his satisfaction. Your only other alternative would be to hope you get a patient agent at the check-in desk and can get seats together then. If you don't want to take chances, I would pay for the seats the second time and do a chargeback request with my credit card company after the flight. If Iberia doesn't properly respond to your credit card company, you win. And, when we have had similar situations, we have found our credit card company will simply absorb the charges as a good will gesture. Maybe not fair to them, but.............

I would either try calling Iberia again or just wait until you get to airport, reach an assistant from the check-in counter and tell them to solve your problem. I always have had good experience with these.

Thanks everyone.

Call direct IBERIA airlines customer support.

Update?

I looked online again and it seems they have reverted to the seat configuration they had originally when I reserved our seats, so now they're back next to each other again. So strange.