I feel bad for your friends. They come to you often for good steakhouse recommendations and instead of pointing them to the restaurant with the best food and great service except on Valentine's Day, you send them down the block to the mediocre place in an effort to pay this place back. One of your friends might catch on and stop asking for recommendations, or worse, start giving you bad ones as well.

As for your second example, I don't find this to be good customer service. You paid for an upgrade and didn't get it. It's not just about the incremental upgrade. You could have booked elsewhere and the upgrade was part of that decision. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole sometimes. They could have done better than a refund on the delta and some booze.