Glad to hear that the 2nd AAgent was able to help - what she most likely had done was "to take control of the reservation" by moving the reservation from under Travel Agency control to under AA control. She must have felt sorry for your predicament. Agent has the power to do that. Whether an agent would do it for a customer is an entirely different matter. This then enable you to be able to select seats on AA website. It is an awful lot of money to pay to select those seats though. All told it seems you have spent almost $500 just for seat selection alone. wow.