I've never paid a change fee on an AS flight, and I flew with them for years before figuring out the whole status thing. Most of the time, I didn't even need to ask for a waiver - just had a friendly conversation with the agent for 5 minutes, treated them as a person, etc. On the few times where I did need to ask, they were always happy to waive it.
Now, of course, I don't need to hope for this, but just my .02.