I used to get bumped all the time too - I paid for most of 2004 travel with vouchers from 2003.

Last year, I had a AMS-ORD on KL (NW-coded) flight that was overbooked by quite a few. My final destination was WAS (anywhere was fine, though IAD is where my car was). They were offering 400 EUROs! (not dollars, but Euros!). They needed me, but said they couldn't get me back to WAS. They had rebooked their ORD pax on a Kuwait Airways flight. I tried offering routings through BOS/JFK/ATL/DTW/MSP and even CDG/IAD - but apparently, every flight to the US was overbooked that day & they couldn't get me back. I even offered to overnight in AMS at my own expense. Nothing...

In November, I had flown DCA-MSP-NRT-BKK & the MSP-NRT flight was overbooked - I volunteered & it turned out to be a perfect sell!

Then, a few weeks ago, I was flying DCA-MEM-LAS - DCA-MEM was overbooked by 6. They needed volunteers - but there was NO way they could get me LAS that night (and I was meeting friends & the hotel was in my name, so I had to be there to check-in - we were using a discount only I was eligible for, otherwise I would have changed the name on the booking). I had alternate routings on every other carrier (literally) - I even offered to drive myself to IAD & take a 9PM direct on UA - but even that was overbooked! The only route they could have done for me was DCA-NW-MSP-HP-LAS where the HP flight was in F (but they didn't want to have that expense, so they didn't).

With flight cut-backs, even on overbooked flights, sometimes there aren't alternatives, even if you're pretty flexible!