No, book online and hold the reservation. Then call to make changes, but don't have the phone people issue the ticket. Then go back online to redeem and no phone fee. A hassle? Kind of, yes.

But I have used info gained from the phone reps to book an award ticket using the multi-city option and it came up to be the same number of miles as they said on the phone. As was said earlier, you need a combination of online and phone to make it work. But it is sad that Delta is taking their award booking engine and making it the standard. It is so obvious they want to screw over their frequent flyers by having us use tens of thousands more miles than really needed.