I wholly agree. Most folks got distracted by the miles earning side of things and forgot that the point is to spend them.

My last reward trip was NYC-IST-Any of about 6 airports in England-NYC. I made at least 5 changes to the routing as better options opened up in the 5 months after I booked it, with the last change being made about a month prior to travel. And I was still looking for the nonstop DL flight JFK-IST until 2 days prior to the trip at which point I finally gave up and took the trip as booked at that point. But I was able to confirm seats on a cruddy routing to start with (ORY/CDG connection, forced overnight for 10 hours in CDG on the return, etc.) just in case nothing better came along. And when you're using miles there are times when nothing better will come along.

I actually think that the free reward changes for Platinums is the best benefit of that status. Better than the incremental 25% bonus over gold. Better than the EUA priority over gold. Better than the incrementally shorter hold times on calls. Seeing the new fees for this being so high is pretty appalling, especially since, as noted above, the actual cost to make the change is virtually nil and CO's expectation of realizing cash revenue for the seats in question is only slightly higher than that.