I'm booked in Premium Economy (Class "A") for flights LAX-TPE and TPE-LAX. The LAX-TPE seat selection was fine, but TPE-LAX showed zero seats available for selection at booking. Nothing has opened up on the seatmap for TPE-LAX since booking, however Expert Flyer shows quite a few seats as blocked.

Any sense of how close to departure CI will release the blocked seats?

Any experiences with calling in and pushing for a confirmed seat -vs- hoping all goes well at checkin?