Aw, jeez, I can see I'm not alone with oddball award ticket "pricing" issues today.

All I can say is that I've been a CO plat for over 2 decades now. Sure, odd issues occasionally come up booking award travel there -- especially when you're trying to cobble together some limited award availability. But they always manage to get it to work. If there's a routing you have to take because the better routings are unavailable, they give it to you. Somebody fixes it. And if better seats become available later, and you ask for them, you get those, too.

I can see that's not necessarily the case with DL.