Nick,
please see RFC4277 (
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4277)
Page 6 says:
BGP has a separate metric parameter for IBGP and EBGP. This allows policy-based metrics to overwrite the distance-based metrics; this allows each autonomous system to define its independent policies in Intra-AS, as well as Inter-AS. BGP Multi Exit Discriminator (MED) is used as a metric by EBGP peers (i.e., inter- domain),
while Local Preference (LOCAL_PREF) is used by IBGP peers (i.e., intra-domain) ... and so on...
As a customer you can't add localpref direct in your ISP/Upstream/Transit AS.
Your ISP/Upstream/Transit can configure for customers on their own router/routers BGP community that you could use to change localpref for your prefix/prefixes in their AS.
--
Jarek