I am certainly no fan of the quirky limitations often placed on award seats.

But, here's my perspective. I wanted to fly to Halifax in high season. DL could have just zeroed out inventory, making no award seats available for this busy time of the year. I can see their logic (and I don't often see anything from the airlines' point of view) in not wanting to make many, if any, low level award seats available for August.

Since I have to make the trip, I would have bought tickets, even though, if memory serves me correctly, the round trip fare pp at the time I booked was between USD400.00 and USD500.00 for all carriers.

At least DL made some awards available, which allowed me to book, even at a high level. And while I might have bought elsewhere than from DL, DL did not get USD400-USD500 pp for my seats. I was willing to use the extra miles to save the money due to these high fares. So now I in essence have paid roughly USD150.00 per ticket (fee plus taxes) instead of the USD400-USD500, and I have the extra miles back in my account.

I guess I was surprised that the DL rep was in essence actively looking for ways to help DL and myself, if I was willing to pay the fee.