Yesterday I booked a trip to AMS for April on one of the A330 flights from DTW, in coach. When I got to the seat selection screen, it would let me select any of the designated "elite premium seats", but not any of the "exit row seats". I completed the ticketing process and then called the Gold Elite line. The rep seemed surprised that I could not select exit rows on line, but proceeded to reassign my seats to those that I had wanted (10A&B). However she warned me that she "could only request" these seats for me and that if they needed them for some other reason (such as small children, handicapped, etc.) on the day of the flight, that "we could be reassigned". I agreed to this and she reserved the seats for us. Several hours later 10A&B showed up on my online record.

My question is, how often do they bump people from these exit row seats (despite elite status) and if this happened to us where would we likely end up? Is there some protocol for this? As a Gold, should I be worried and better off selecting other standard "P" seats?