Here we go again with the utter LACK of seamlessness between the CO and NW programs.
Old Gold: You don't have to read this; you won't find anything new.

I am a CO Silver Elite, but as far as I can tell, there would have been no difference in this story had I been a Plutonium or even Unobtanium (like Old Gold)!

The other day I made a reservation, on Expedia, for my trip to SEA in June, on NW. (Straight NW flight #'s, no CO codeshares.) I put my OnePass number into the record on Expedia. The seat mapper on Expedia offered regular and "premium" (i.e. Elite) coach seating. It did warn that premium seating might be rejected by the airline based on status.

When I checked the reservation for updates the next day, all four flights showed "seats assigned at the airport". Of course, this meant that NW had rejected my seating requests. I called Continental (having read on several threads that CO Elites have to call Continental to get anything done on Northwest), and requested that they get me Elite coach seating on my NW flights. (I didn't have the Silver Elite hotline number with me, so I called the regular reservation number.)

The first agent said they had no way of accessing NW's system and that I should call Northwest. I then asked for my call to be transferred to the Silver Elite line. Since the transferred call was answered "Continental Reservations", I asked whether I had reached Silver Elite, or One Pass, or what. The agent replied "You've reached Everything!"

Interpreting this as a good sign, I told my story all over again, and again received the suggestion that I call Northwest. I replied that NW wouldn't do anything, and at best would still have to call CO to verify my status. The CO agent volunteered to call NW, and put me on hold for about 15 minutes.

When she came back on the line she was clearly agitated. Here is what she said: "I called Northwest and they refused to assign Elite seating. I then had my supervisor call, and they refused him too. I've gotten you aisle seats on all four flights, but I've also referred this to my manager, because for them to refuse isn't right. When NW Elite flyers call over here we give them Elite seating without any problem. I'm going to try to get management to deal with this because it isn't fair to our Elite members!"

So there!

This could, ultimately, turn out to be moot, if I get upgraded the day of the flights (3 out of the 4 are 757's), but it's nice to know that Continental shares our frustration over this nonsense.