Agreed completely - before I came a real NW Silver Elite (i.e. flew 27K last year, purely leisure), I had the trial SE that CO was offering to anyone with a pulse. I did a trip from PDX-EWR-DCA & because of weather, we got rerouted to SYR & sat on the tarmac for literally 5 hours (and I got to sit next to Vincent D'Onofrio in F, but that's another story!). Obviously, we had missed the flight from EWR-DCA & I just called CO's elite line from my cell on the plane & had them rebook me & 7 other traveling companions on the first flight of the day from EWR-DCA, no charge.

When I finally got to EWR that night, there was literally thousands of people in line, really pissed off, trying to rebook their flights and very few CSR to handle them all - it was like people left at the end of their shift for the day & didn't care for the customer enough to work OT to make people happy - I'm so glad I didn't wait in that line. Instead, I just called the EWR Courtyard shuttle & got a great nights sleep & was refreshed for our morningg flight. The next morning, our flight was overbooked by about 3 people because of the night before's delay & we had a total of 8 confirmed seats, even though we were placed on the flight the night before - I'm assuming the elite status helped open up those seats for all 8 of us.