I do miss being able to buy your way into no change fees. The VX Premium Visa was just a much better credit card than the AS Visa.

For instance, back in November I had an LAX-SFO-BOS booking (no redeye to BOS from LAX), but then got schwacked by the seat renumbering...which I leveraged to get them to change me to an LAX-BOS nonstop while waiving the change fee...as a bonus I even got bumped up to first, which I don't think was happening on the original itinerary. The plane seemed practically half-empty to boot.

I do suspect it got done on the basis that the phone reps were probably getting a ton of abuse over the seat renumbering ...and that someone calmly calling in with a straightforward suggestion for how to fix it that was actually within their power to do was a pleasant surprise.