Well, after 26 hours and no call back from DL as promised, I went to continental.com and found my new schedule. The "very best flights" promised by the nice man in India turned out to have a seven-hour layover in IAH on the way to HSV. Of course, this is all about CO's scheduling and only the poor communication part is DL's fault, so I called DL just to see what they had to say. India transferred me to SLC, and a nice lady apologized for the whole thing and offered to refund my miles without a fee, seeing as how she could not over-ride DL's revenue management to get me on
DL metal. This was because it was originally a partner award, and can only be rebooked on partner metal. I understand and accept that, and feel that I got good customer service today, despite not necessarily getting what I ideally wanted.